IRA suspects to face court in Colombia

With the IRA insisting their ceasefire is still intact, convictions could leave Gerry Adams and the Sinn Fein leadership dangerously exposed to unionist claims that republicans are not fully committed to the peace process.

Barry McElduff, one of the party’s members at the Northern Ireland Assembly, in Bogot to observe today’s hearing said: "Sinn Fein has been voicing concern at their continued detention and the fact that their right to a fair legal process is being denied."

But unionists have accused republicans of seeking to develop weapons in preparation for a possible new military campaign.

On 11 August last year the three men, identified by their passports as David Bracken, John Kelly and Edward Campbell, were arrested as they stepped off a plane from San Vicente del Cagun, the "capital" of the former safe haven of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist guerrilla army that has been fighting the state for 38 years.

The men insisted they were journalists, but when challenged, changed their story, saying they were tourists.

The Colombian authorities had been tipped off by British intelligence that the passports were false - and in fact the men were known members of the Provisional IRA: Niall Connolly - Sinn Fein’s representative in Cuba - Martin John McCauley and James William Monaghan, the latter two believed to be from the IRA’s "engineering department", responsible for the development of explosives and mortars.

British sources said the IRA was using Colombia to develop weapons and raise money by charging the FARC, flush with cash from drugs and kidnapping, for training courses.

The charges from the prosecutor-general’s office state that the three men "instructed guerrillas in the manufacture of bombs, detonation of explosive artefacts and the planning of terrorist attacks".

A document to be presented at the trial, obtained from the prosecutor general’s office by The Scotsman, said the evidence began with the luggage and clothing of the Irishmen, which was subjected to forensic tests "done with the help of the US embassy, which provided equipment to detect traces of narcotics and explosives ... there were positive results for the presence of residues of explosive substances".

There are witness statements confirming sightings of the three men in the guerrilla zone in Colombia’s southern jungles, not just in 2001 but stretching back to 1998.

"One witness maintained that he had seen Martin McCauley in 1998 in the guerrilla safe haven in the company of Comandante Julin of the FARC and that it had been mentioned at the time that the foreigner was one of the trainers for war brought in by the FARC," the official document says.

The authorities have a star witness, a guerrilla deserter, known only as "Alexander", who has provided first-hand evidence of the Irishmen’s involvement, according to the document, insisting that "in 1998 he received training directly from the detained Irishmen, in techniques to arm explosive devices and in the handling of dynamite".

For members of the Colombian security forces, this is an open and shut case.

"You do not have to look any further than the mortaring of the presidential palace [on 7 August] to see the hand of the IRA," said a Colombian general who asked not to be named.

Campaigners for the Irishmen have demanded they be freed, insisting they had been in Colombia to study the country’s previous peace process.

Spokesperson Caitriona Ruane said: "We feel that the men shouldn’t have gone to trial at all, given the lack of hard evidence. The evidence is very flimsy."

Niall Connolly AKA David Bracken

Born in Glenageary, Co Dublin, the son of wealthy middle class parents. Studied at Trinity College, Dublin.

Connolly was already known to Colombian intelligence officials, having spent the decade before his capture cultivating IRA arms contacts in Central America. At one point he used the cover of an aid agency volunteer in El Salvador.

He was best known to the Cuban authorities who had monitored his movements in Havana since he set up home there with his wife, a doctor, in the mid Nineties.

Ironically the Irishman’s alias, David Bracken, was the name of Frederick Forsyth’s dapper assassin in his novel, The Day of the Jackal.

James Monaghan AKA Edward Joseph Campbell

Undoubtedly the leader of the gang and the only one with recorded service in the Provisionals.

Born in Donegal and thought to be in his mid-fifties, Monaghan escaped from a Dublin Court in 1976, shortly before he was due to appear on bomb-making charges. After a long spell in prison, he was elected to Sinn Fein’s National Executive in 1989. At the height of the Troubles, he is reported to have been involved in bomb-making and training.

Believed to be the Provisional IRA’s answer to the fictional "Q" in the Bond films, Monaghan is an improvisational genius in the technology of killing.

Martin McCauley AKA John Joseph Kelly

Believed to have been No2 in the gang and Monaghan’s trusted sidekick.

McCauley, 37, from Lurgan, Co Armagh, was shot by an undercover RUC unit when he was 19.

Police had suspected him of guarding a hayshed they believed was an IRA arms and explosives dump.

After he was shot during an RUC raid on the building, the police found no evidence of weapons or explosives and McCauley was later awarded substantial compensation.

Although Sinn Fein maintains he has never been a member of the party, in 1996, McCauley was director of elections in Upper Bannside, where the party won a seat.