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Ireland unlikely to deport men to Colombia
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Three Irish Republican Army-linked men who have resurfaced in Ireland after fleeing convictions for training rebels in Colombia are unlikely to face extradition back to the South American nation, Irish officials and experts said Monday. Breaking his silence on the matter, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he expected the three -- Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and Jim Monaghan -- to be shipped back to serve their 17-year prison terms imposed eight months ago. Uribe said Colombia "cannot close its eyes to this."But legal authorities say Ireland's lack of an extradition treaty with Colombia, combined with international concerns about poor human rights standards and prison security there, should prove too high a barrier to clear. They agree that a local, minor prosecution for the men's passport violations -- they traveled abroad using forged passports and evidently sneaked back into Ireland without passing through immigration and customs checks -- appears more likely. "It is the case that this country does not have an extradition treaty with Colombia," Prime Minister Bertie Ahern wrote in Monday's edition of The Irish Times. "If we receive a request for assistance from the Colombian government, it will be considered in accordance with our legal obligations. That will be subject to scrutiny in the courts, as is right and proper in a democracy." Remy Farrell, a Dublin lawyer who is an expert in extradition law, said Ahern's government faced a daunting series of legal hurdles, making the possibility of an extradition years from now "at best slight." "So long as there is no bilateral extradition treaty between Ireland and Colombia, there can be no extradition," Farrell said. "This then begs the question as to whether the (Irish) government would enter into such an agreement." The biggest obstacle to establishing a treaty, Farrell said, was Colombia's human rights record, which he noted has been criticized by the United Nations. The risk that the men could be killed in prison could also be cited as a reason to refuse extradition, he said. The three men, using false identities, were arrested in August 2001 while trying to leave Colombia after spending five weeks in jungles controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the major rebel group trying to topple the country's U.S.-backed government. British anti-terrorist police have identified Monaghan as the IRA's senior weapons engineer and McCauley as one of his deputies. Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, initially denied any knowledge of Connolly, but two months after the arrest announced he was Sinn Fein's Cuba-based representative for Latin America, a previously unknown post. The men at various times have claimed either to have been nature-lovers on vacation or researchers into Colombia's peace process. State prosecutors accused the trio of training the FARC rebels how to make IRA-style car bombs and heavy mortars. The rural-based FARC has begun using such weaponry in cities, most prominently in August 2002, when a mortar barrage during Uribe's inauguration killed 27 civilians outside the presidential palace. The three were initially acquitted of training rebels in June 2004, but the judge ordered them to remain in Colombia pending the government's appeal. The appellate court in December ruled 2-1 to convict the men on all charges -- but police couldn't find them. Uribe downplayed the lack of an extradition treaty. "Extradition these days is something I consider only natural in international relations," Uribe told a Bogota broadcaster, Radio Melodia. "It should be applied whether or not there is a treaty because in a world so globalized, countries should not hold back from carrying out extraditions." Earlier, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos said the government's own legal officers hadn't drafted any formal extradition request yet. "The least we expect from the Irish government is they either pay their sentence in Irish jails or that they be extradited," Santos told RTE radio. "How? We do not know exactly at this precise moment." Posted by: Steve 2005-08-08 |
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