3 Irish Republicans Formally Charged Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Friday August 24 3:46 PM ET (via Yahoo) Suspected IRA Trio 'On Vacation' in Colombia - Papers By Ibon Villelabeitia BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Three suspected IRA members charged with training Colombian leftist rebels in bomb making told prosecutors they were visiting Colombia to see the Amazon, write about wildlife and learn Spanish, court documents show. The men, identified as Niall Terence Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan, are accused of carrying false passports and of training guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to make bombs and other weapons during a five-week stay in a rebel safe haven in the jungle. On Friday, the Colombian army said it has arrested a fourth IRA suspect but provided no more information. According to documents in a sealed Colombian criminal investigation obtained by Reuters, Connolly, McCauley and Monaghan told prosecutors they never met FARC rebels and that all they knew about Colombia's 37-year-old war and rebel activity came from newspapers. The trio is being held in a maximum security prison in Bogota. Colombia's public prosecutor's office has eight months to prepare its case against them. According to the investigation case file, forensic tests carried out by the U.S. Embassy in Colombia on the men, who were arrested at Bogota airport as they attempted to leave the South American nation on Aug. 11, showed they came in contact with four types of explosives used to fabricate detonators. The men, alleged to be members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), have hired three top criminal lawyers in Colombia, including Jaime Bernal Cuellar, Colombia's former attorney general. The three have denied the charges. `TOURISTS IN THE AMAZON'' Asked by prosecutors why he visited a demilitarized area under FARC control, Niall Terence Connolly, said he wanted `to see the Amazon as a tourist'' and `improve my Spanish.'' The Colombian government temporarily handed over the territory in southern Colombian jungles to the FARC 2-1/2 years ago to launch peace talks. The 17,000-member FARC is Latin America's oldest and most powerful rebel force. `We saw the place and came back. We visited the river and saw some rain forest because we wanted to see the Amazon. When we returned, we were arrested by the police,'' Connolly said in his deposition, which, like that of the other two, appears in the court papers in Spanish translated from English. Monaghan said he visited Colombia because he was ''interested in the Colombian peace process'' and wanted to ''write about nature, rivers, the jungle and animals.'' McCauley said he was `on vacation'' and writing a piece for a `political publication in Ireland.'' They denied having manipulated explosives in the jungle and said the traces could have been on their clothes and belongings because of `contamination in the atmosphere.'' The trio denied being members of the IRA. But a document sent by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland's police, to Colombian authorities and included in the file, said Monaghan and McCauley are `known to the RUC as leading members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.'' A document sent by the British Embassy to Colombian prosecutors says Monaghan and McCauley are believed to have links to the group's engineering department, in charge of making explosives. But defense lawyers said no strong evidence exists linking the trio to the FARC. `There are no serious elements of proof in this case. The Colombian government is under international pressure,'' Dagoberto Charry, a former Colombian senator, who is representing McCauley, said. The country's former prosecutor, Jaime Bernal Cuellar, is representing Monaghan. The three lawyers said they are being paid by the trio's relatives. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-08.25.01-01:41:10-29847