One of three IRA suspects arrested in Colombia on suspicion of honing
their bomb-making skills with Marxist rebels is a member of Sinn Fein,
senior security sources said last night.
The RUC and Garda said Niall Connolly, originally from Dublin but a
resident of Cuba for six years, worked for the political party in central
America.
Sinn Fein strenuously denied Mr Connolly had any link with them, but the
escalating row is very embarrassing for the party leader, Gerry Adams, who
is due to visit Latin America next month on a lecture tour. It is also
hugely damaging to the peace process.
A Belfast security source claimed the Colombian expedition was authorised
by the IRA leadership in Ireland, most probably by Brian Keenan, the
go-between to General John de Chastelain's disarmament body. Mr Connolly,
a fluent Spanish speaker, would have provided the local link.
"Connolly is a member of Sinn Fein," he said. "He operated out of Dublin
but he has been in Cuba since 1996. This shows the two faces of Sinn Fein
and the IRA, and raises the question whether the distance between the two
is entirely artificial."
The IRA has now withdrawn its confidential plan to start destroying
weapons, and the Latin American revelations have further poisoned the
atmosphere between unionists and republicans, who have less than six weeks
to reach a deal on arms, policing and demilitarisation.
The deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists, Peter Robinson, claimed
British intelligence sources told him the men were in Colombia to receive
schooling from Farc guerrillas in the use of a new type of explosive more
powerful than Semtex.
"While PIRA was providing Farc with training in urban terrorism and
armaments, they benefited from the two-way exchange by gaining training in
this latest bomb making process and its key ingredient which takes
explosive technology to a new and even more deadly level," he said.
Police in Bogota are questioning Mr Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin
McCauley, who security sources say are top IRA bomb makers.
The Colombian authorities have satellite footage, probably supplied by the
CIA, of the men with Farc in an isolated jungle area where they are
thought to have spent the last five weeks. They could spend up to 20 years
in jail if the allegations are proved.
A Belfast security source said the remoteness of the region would be a
useful place to test new weapons. Mr Monaghan is a former senior Sinn Fein
member who sat with Gerry Adams at annual conferences in the 1980s. Mr
McCauley was the party's director of elections in Upper Bann in 1996.
But a Sinn Fein spokesman said the two had no current links with the party
and denied Mr Connolly was ever a member.
