Colombia Likely to Deport 3 Irish Repblicans Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Two items from the mainstream press follow... COLOMBIA LIKELY TO DEPORT 3 IRISH REPUBLICANS Sunday, August 19 6:45 AM SGT (AFP, via Yahoo) HAVANA, Aug 18 (AFP)--Cuba has denied any links to the suspected activities in Colombia of an Irishman detained in Bogota and accused of collaborating with leftist rebels, while admitting the man was Sinn Fein's representative in Havana. Niall Connolly "is the official representative of Sinn Fein in Cuba," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Aymee Fernandez told reporters Friday. "We want to make it very clear that the presence of Mr Connolly in Colombia has no connection with his official and legal activities in Havana," Fernandez said. Connolly and two other Irishmen were detained in Bogota last week and accused of being members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and of training members of Colombia's largest rebel group in the use of explosives. Connolly, who was traveling under the name David Bracken, was also accused of using false documents. The trio was arrested August 11 at Bogota's Eldorado airport while returning from the demilitarized zone where the 16,500-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is based. The men have reportedly told Colombian investigators they were visiting the zone to determine the status of peace negotiations between the group and the government. Colombian officials will decide by mid-week whether to deport, extradite or bring terrorism charges against the men, a court official told AFP Saturday. The revelation that one of the three was the representative of the IRA's political arm in Havana put the Cuban government in an awkward position. Along with Spain, France, Norway and Switzerland, Cuba is one of a group of nations that has vowed to assist Colombia's peace-making efforts. Castro admitted in 1998 that the communist island had been a refuge and training ground for leftist guerrillas in the 1960s and 1980s. Cuba's links to the IRA and the Basque separatist group ETA strained its relations with other countries in recent years. But Connally's alleged activities in Colombia, if true, would be out of step with the Cuban government's current stance as a backer of the peace process in Colombia. In October, Castro said: "Colombia has no other alternative than peace. We have worked for peace and are ready to do whatever we can" to advance it. Havana has hosted talks between representatives of the government of President Andres Pastrana and the National Liberation Army, the second largest rebel group in Colombia, most recently in early 2001. Castro irked FARC leaders when at a 1999 summit in Rio de Janeiro, he stated: "Now is not the time for guerrillas in Latin America." "In Colombia guerrilla activity is justified because there is violence, hunger, unemployment, misery, disappearances, torture and murder," FARC military leader Jorge Briceno replied, days later. Following the arrests in Bogota, the United States -- Cuba's ideological enemy -- said the IRA could face US penalties should it be determined the group had connections with Colombia's largest left-wing guerrilla army. It was not known what impact if any the incident would have on a Latin American tour planned for September by Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The tour was to include a stop in Cuba. Sinn Fein has denied that the three men detained in Bogota are in any way related to them, but Cuba's assertion that Connolly was its representative in Havana calls that denial into question. * Saturday August 18 1:09 AM ET (via yahoo) Colombia Deportation 'Likely' for Alleged IRA Trio By Phil Stewart BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Three suspected Irish Republican Army (news - web sites) members arrested in Colombia for allegedly training Marxist rebels will probably be deported, as early as next week, a Colombian judicial source said on Friday. `Deportation is likely,'' the source said. `But they cannot be deported before next Wednesday.'' The comments came as leaders of Colombia's armed forces acknowledged they could prove only that the three men carried false passports -- a crime punishable by deportation. Other evidence the armed forced gathered was more circumstantial: Tests showing the three had come in contact with drugs and explosives, and that they had spent five weeks in the a demilitarized area ceded to FARC rebels 2-1/2 years ago to launch peace talks. `This is all that the public prosecutor has,'' Armed Forces chief Gen. Fernando Tapias told reporters. `What the public prosecutor may have done in its investigation and what they (the IRA suspects) may have said we do not know.'' Army Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora said that despite the tests, showing the three came in contact with cocaine and amphetamines, there was no evidence they were involved in the drug trade with the FARC, Colombia's largest rebel force, which admits to `taxing'' traffickers to fill war chests. `We could entertain many hypotheses that can be deduced from contacts between the IRA and the FARC, of the exchange they could have, but at this moment we do not have conclusive evidence,'' Mora said. In Havana on Friday, a spokeswoman for Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s government said one of the three men -- Niall Terence Connolly -- was the representative in Latin America for Northern Irish political party Sinn Fein. She said he had been based in communist-run Cuba since 1996. British media have quoted Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally, as denying Connolly had any link with it. Colombian officials have named Connolly as the leader of the three, who are being held on suspicion they trained FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) members in making bombs and other weapons. The trio were arrested last Saturday at Bogota airport as they attempted to leave. They are all from from Northern Ireland and have been linked to the IRA by Colombian and British officials. In Colombia, the arrests have triggered fears the 17,000-member FARC, fighting for a socialist state, is preparing a campaign of violence from within the demilitarized zone. Gen. Tapias said the arrests showed `the FARC have connections with other subversive and terrorist groups on an international level, and they they are exploiting the good faith of Colombians in the peace process.'' ================================================================= 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-08.19.01-17:47:26-9315