COLOMBIA'S war crimes tribunal has granted an amnesty to three former IRA members sentenced for assisting the now-defunct Farc rebel group.
Martin McCauley, Niall Connolly and James Monaghan received an amnesty after the Bogotá court ruled them eligible. The three men were arrested in 2001 travelling on false passports at Bogotá International Airport.
They were sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2004 but had already fled Colombia for Ireland.
Leaders of Farc, which is now a political party, have been testifying to the tribunal, recounting their part in killings during the conflict. McCauley, Connolly and Monaghan were found to have been teaching the Colombian guerrillas bomb-making techniques. Monaghan was said to be an IRA ‘engineering officer’ who helped the group devise and develop improvised artillery weapons including mortar bombs. He maintained that he and the others were in Colombia to assist in a peace process but authorities there said there was evidence that around the same time, Farc began using mortars and bombs identical in construction to those used by the IRA.
The men’s arrest threatened to derail Northern Ireland’s fledgling peace process. Unionists said the presence of IRA members in a warzone indicated that the organisation would not honour its ceasefire or the Good Friday Agreement.
