May 15, 2002
Adams ally's trade in terror
Adams ally's trade in terror
By Toby Harnden in Bogota
A senior IRA leader and key ally of Gerry Adams
travelled to Colombia on a false passport to meet
terrorists who were being trained by the
Provisionals in return for drug money, The Telegraph
has established.
Padraig Wilson, 44, was the leader of IRA prisoners
in the Maze until he was freed early in 1999 under
the Good Friday Agreement. He had served only a
third of a 24-year sentence for possession of a car
bomb and his secret trip broke the terms of his
release licence.
The IRA is believed to have received hundreds of
thousands of pounds from the Marxist group
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the Farc)
for help in developing terrorist techniques at least
as far back as 1997, when the Provisionals declared
a ceasefire.
A Telegraph investigation in Colombia and
Washington also found that a Farc witness claimed
to have seen James Monaghan, a convicted IRA
explosives expert - named under parliamentary
privilege as the group's "director of engineering" -
unloading boxes of missiles from a private plane in
2000.
Senior Colombian army and police officers said the
IRA had greatly helped the Farc's capabilities.
The Farc is threatening to bring the country to its
knees. In recent months it has used gas cylinder
mortars almost identical to those developed by the
IRA with devastating effect.
On May 2, such a mortar killed 119 people, many of
them children, at a church in Choco province.
Col Harold Lara, a police intelligence officer, said:
"Since February we have lost 220 electrical towers,
had 32 bridges blown up and had 30 police units
attacked."
Colombian intelligence documents say that Wilson
entered Bogota, the capital, on Air France flight 422
on April 5 last year and flew on by Satena Airlines to
San Vicente del Caguan in Farc territory. There he
was met by guerrilla leaders. He returned to Paris
on April 16 by the same route.
A copy of an Irish passport bearing the name James
Edward Walker and a photograph of Wilson has
been passed to The Telegraph by Colombian
intelligence.
Wilson was accompanied on the flights by Niall
Connolly, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba.
Connolly, Monaghan and Martin McCauley were
arrested on Aug 11 last year as they tried to leave
Bogota for Paris.
They are alleged to be leading IRA members and are
in jail awaiting trial on charges of training Farc
terrorists.
The presence of such a high-ranking IRA man as
Wilson in Colombia is powerful evidence that training
activities were authorised by the terrorist group's
top leadership.
A surveillance photograph of Wilson taken at San
Vicente del Caguan airport was shown by the
Colombian authorities at a House international
relations committee hearing in Washington last
month. Wilson, a former Sinn Fein worker, is a
strong supporter and friend of Mr Adams, the
president of Sinn Fein.
Another visitor to the Farc zone, entering on April 7
last year has been identified by British sources as a
Dublin journalist and dedicated republican. He, like
Wilson, travelled to San Vicente del Caguan via
Bogota from Paris on a false passport. A Colombian
document handed to the committee hearing
identified him as "an IRA member".
All the IRA men travelling to the Farc zone from
Bogota took internal flights with Satena, the
national airline operated by the military.
Before Andres Pastrana, the Colombian president,
abandoned the concept of the Farc zone in
February, civilian passengers were greeted by
armed Farc members.
The House committee produced a devastating report
into the IRA's links with the Farc, although some of
Sinn Fein's allies among Congress members tried to
discredit its findings. British intelligence sources say
that Brian Keenan, a member of the IRA's ruling
army council with Mr Adams, also met leaders of the
Farc, which has more than 18,000 members and
controls much of the country's drug trade.
David Adams, a cousin of the Sinn Fein leader who
was sentenced to 25 years in 1995 for conspiracy to
murder and was also released early, is believed to
have been among up to a dozen other IRA men who
travelled to the Farc zone last year.
Emphasising that Wilson's trip was sanctioned by
the IRA leadership, a senior British diplomatic source
said: "You don't get much more senior than Wilson.
This came right from the top."
By breaching his licence, Wilson is liable to be
returned to jail to complete his sentence without
having to be convicted of any offences. He is said to
have acted as an emissary for the republican
leadership.
"I think the message was, 'I bring greetings from
the great leader,' " the source said. Asked who the
leader was, he replied: "Adams."
There was no reply from Sinn Fein's press office in
Belfast last night and a call to Rita O'Hare, its
Washington representative, was not returned.
Mr Adams has said that neither he "nor anyone else
in the Sinn Fein leadership were aware that the
three men [Connolly, Monaghan and McCauley] were
travelling to Colombia".
Washington, London and Bogota are convinced that
the IRA's Colombian activities are also linked to
Cuba, Venezuela and to Eta, the Basque terrorist
group in Spain.
IRA leaders are believed to have used some of the
payments to buy weapons in Latin America.
At the same time they were carrying out symbolic
acts of arms decommissioning in return for the Army
closing bases and demolishing watchtowers in
Northern Ireland.
The money is thought to have reached the IRA
through offshore accounts administered by the Farc.
Some is likely to have been funnelled to Sinn Fein
and some could have been used to buy arms from
suppliers in eastern Europe.
A ban on Gerry Adams and three other Sinn Fein
MPs from using the facilities of the House of Lords,
including the bar and library, was upheld by the
influential office committee yesterday. It will now be
debated on the floor of the Lords. The ban was
imposed at the prompting of Lord Lamont, Lord
Waddington and Lord Tebbit, former Tory Cabinet
ministers who were in government during the IRA
bombing campaign.