London Sunday Times-IRA woman was 'envoy' to Cuba Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit [It is unclear why, the headline has quotes around the word "envoy." The Sunday Times of London is a distinctly separate operation from the daily paper, and like many of these Sunday papers such as the Telegraph (and to some extent the Sunday sections of The NY Times), it is run by an even more reactionary bunch of brit troglodytes than the daily. Here they sound positively breathless with excitement to discover that Irish Republicans have official representatives to places like *Cuba!* -- NY Transfer] The Sunday Times of London, August 26 2001 IRA woman was "envoy" to Cuba Liam Clarke, Nicholas Rufford and Tony Allen-Mills The Provisional IRA has developed far more extensive contacts in Latin America than previously realised and had an envoy in Cuba from at least 1990. Its supporters have also been receiving funds from the European Union, it was revealed last week. In the wake of three IRA suspects being arrested in Colombia two weeks ago, it has emerged that Eibhlin (Evelyn) Glenholmes - a senior IRA figure - had close contacts with Fidel Castro's regime from 1990 to 1995. Glenholmes, 43, was suspected of involvement in the Brighton bombing of 1984, which killed five people, and was the subject of nine extradition warrants by Britain for three murders and one attempted murder, plus lesser crimes. Last year Tony Blair, the prime minister, as part of the peace process, agreed to allow Glenholmes to return to Belfast, where she now lives at a secret address. Last week the Cuban embassy in London declined to comment on her role. But it is believed Glenholmes was succeeded as the IRA's envoy to Havana by Niall Connolly, one of the men arrested in Colombia two weeks ago. He was detained with James "Mortar" Monaghan, the IRA's most experienced explosives expert, who has been running training camps, and Martin McCauley, who has a record for firearms offences. According to false passports seized during their arrest, Connolly and Monaghan had visited Venezuela, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in recent years. Connolly, who had been living in Havana, where the Cuban government claimed he was Sinn Fein's legal representative, had also visited Panama. Other alleged IRA fugitives in the area are believed to include Paul Damery, who is wanted for questioning about the murder of an Irish policeman during a robbery in 1996. He runs a bar in Nicaragua and travels widely in the area. The indications that IRA suspects had contacts with left-wing regimes in Latin America will cause disquiet in the United States. American officials, who are sympathetic to Sinn Fein despite its links to the IRA, regard the Farc rebels in Colombia as drug peddlers and terrorists. Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said America was monitoring the situation closely and would take a dim view of any collaboration between the IRA and the rebels. Monaghan: held in Bogota The leading Sinn Fein representative in America, Rita O'Hare, was summoned to the US embassy while on holiday in Dublin to hear the Bush administration's concern about the Farc link. And last week Sinn Fein said plans for Gerry Adams to visit Cuba, after calling off a trip last year, were still "fluid". Sinn Fein is acutely aware of the sensitivity of American public opinion and has denied any link to the three men now being held in La Modelo prison outside Bogota. The party raises most of its income in America. Financial returns that Cairde Sinn Fein, the main fundraising organisation, is about to lodge with the US Justice Department show that the party receives an average of about $100,000 (about =A369,000) a month, mainly through dinners attended by leading figures such as Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness. Funding has also been supplied to IRA supporters by the European Union. Monaghan, the most senior member of the alleged IRA team arrested in Colombia, was being paid with EU money until days before he left for Bogota. Regarded by British security services as the head of the IRA's engineering unit, Monaghan was an official in a group of former republican prisoners called Tar Isteach - Irish for Come In. The organisation, which had links with Brian Keenan, the IRA's deputy chief of staff, received thousands of pounds from an EU "peace and reconciliation fund" and from a training and employment organisation backed jointly by the EU and the Dublin government. The disclosure provoked an angry reaction from some members of the European parliament, who accused the EU of naively helping to fund individuals engaged in terrorism. "This is not the first time that we have had cause to question the peace and reconciliation fund and I will be calling for audited accounts of how taxpayers' money has been spent," said Christopher Heaton-Harris, a Tory MEP and member of the European parliament's spending watchdog committee. Monaghan's group was part of a wider network of former prisoners, also paid for with tens of thousands of pounds of EU cash. Called Coiste na nIarchimi (ex-prisoners' committee) it is organised from Dublin partly by Ella O'Dwyer, who was jailed for life at the Old Bailey in 1986 for plotting to bomb a string of British seaside resorts and released in 1998 under the Ulster peace agreement. The group's Dublin office, recently opened by Keenan, received an Ir=A373,000 grant from an agency that distributes EU peace funds. The grant was to "support ex-prisoner groups in [Irish] border areas". Coiste is also financed by the Irish government as a consequence of the Good Friday peace agreement. A spokesman for the organisation said: "Both these organisations [Coiste and Tar Isteach] were set up to help republican ex-prisoners and thus the fact that Brian Keenan opened the Coiste offices and Jim Monaghan worked for Tar Isteach - both being former republican political prisoners - should come as no surprise." The EU's peace and reconciliation fund is one of the largest blocks of money handed out by Brussels. It is spent on a wide range of community projects as well as helping former prisoners. So far, about =A3630m has been earmarked or spent. The money comes from European taxpayers, but EU officials admitted they had no idea what much of it was used for and relied on intermediary agencies in Northern Ireland and the republic to distribute it. A fourth Irishman detained near the rebel stronghold in Colombia last week claimed yesterday that he had no connection with the IRA. Kevin Crennan, who was arrested at an army roadblock, said he had stopped in the rebel zone out of curiosity. Officials have said he had a valid tourist visa. Crennan said he expected to be released imminently and put on a plane out of the country. ================================================================= 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-08.27.01-19:28:00-13046