Bogotá, Colombia – Tom Burke, a reporter for Fight Back! conducted the following interview with Agustin Jimenez Cuello, the president of the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners, on Dec. 7. Agustin Jimenez is the lawyer who represents the Colombia Three – three Irish political activists imprisoned in Colombia on politically motivated, false charges. The three are awaiting the continuation of their trial.

Fight Back!: The Colombia Three, James Monaghan, Niall Connolly, and Martin McCauley were arrested and charged after visiting the Despeje, or Zone for Peace Dialogue, that the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) legally controlled for a few years while negotiating with then Colombian president Pastrana. What were the Colombia Three doing in the Peace Zone and what are the government’s charges against them?

Agustin Jimenez: What the Colombian authorities say is the three Irishmen are accused by an ‘intelligence informant’ who claims to have seen several foreigners in the Peace Zone training the FARC in combat. The Colombia Three are charged with training guerrilla fighters in the use of cylinder mortars.

The Irishmen say they were witnessing the Colombian peace process, in particular the prisoner exchange between the FARC and the Colombian military – investigating what happens during conflict resolution and the reintegration of prisoners into society. The Three have a particular interest in this: James Monoghan works in a similar support group – the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Ireland – and was involved in negotiations that led to the release of Irish prisoners and precisely the need to reintegrate prisoners into society. James has written several articles on this, including writing about FARC negotiations and other processes, so as to make comparisons and analysis. Martin McCauley is an ex-prisoner who came to the Peace Zone to share his experiences and Niall Connolly served as their interpreter and translator.

Another charge against the Colombia Three is that of using false passports. This is a pretense to their arrest. Everyone understands that many former political prisoners in Ireland use false passports, especially to enter the United States, where many of them travel and have friends and family. Because U.S. immigration law has an article essentially saying if you are detained as a political prisoner in Ireland, then you cannot enter the U.S. Other countries have followed the U.S. on this. Many famous people – authors, professors, musicians, etc. – travel with false passports.

Fight Back!: What is happening in the trial now?

Agustin Jimenez: In the Colombian trial, there are three phases. First, there is the interrogation of the accused, which has been completed. Second, the prosecution presents its case. This phase has stalled because the prosecution cannot bring their witnesses to testify. The Colombian government detains the witnesses, but claims one cannot be found and the other refuses to travel to the court. The third phase involves the defense presenting their case. The prosecutor attempted to get the defense to present first. This unusual step reveals that the government has no case. Still, the judge would not rule to dismiss the case. So the trial is a stalemate for now.

Fight Back!: Does the Colombian government have evidence against the Three?

Agustin Jimenez: So far, the Colombian government has produced four testimonies from witnesses. Two say that the Colombia Three had bad motives and one says they were there to teach mortar use. On cross-examination in the interrogation phase, this witness changed his testimony and said it was a German who he saw in Colombia.

Besides the two ‘eyewitnesses,’ the Colombian prosecutor has two forensics experts, one from the Colombian Security Administration, who tested the Irishmen’s clothing for explosives evidence and found nothing. The other forensics testimony is from a U.S. Embassy official, who supposedly found explosives residue on a later test. The U.S. Embassy’s evidence led to the trial. The U.S. Embassy evidence contradicts the Colombian Security Administration evidence.

Fight Back!: What are prison conditions like in Colombia? Where are the Colombia Three held now?

Agustin Jimenez: There is a grave situation in the prisons. Since 1995, the prison population has grown tremendously. The prisons are at 300% of capacity. The conditions are inhuman. There is great violence within the prisons. Many guards are corrupt and there are many weapons and murders. Health care is poor and the food is bad. Usually the prisoners have worked, but there is not enough work with all the overcrowding. The last three years have been much more complicated, with the paramilitaries in the jails. The paramilitaries align with the drug traffickers and since 1999 have declared a war in the prisons. The political prisoners demand separation from the paramilitaries, but this only happened following a June 2001 paramilitary massacre. The news showed the paramilitaries in the prisons with grenades, guns, and M-16 rifles.

The current president, Uribe, appointed a new head of prisons who is trying to end separation. The Colombia Three are held on the first floor with forty-three other political prisoners in Bogotá. Three floors of paramilitaries surround the political prisoners. It is very cramped; they get no sunlight, no outdoor activity, and have to be alert that no paramilitaries can get to the first floor. The Irishmen refused to attend the first stage of their trial, the interrogation. The guards tried to force them, but the Three resisted.

Fight Back!: People in Ireland and the U.S. say the Colombia Three cannot obtain a fair trial. Is this true?

Agustin Jimenez: The Irishmen protested by refusing to attend the first trial phase. This is their right. There is no chance of a fair trial in Colombia. The British, U.S., and Colombian governments have intervened politically in the procedure. Two North American lawyers, a British lawyer, an Australian lawyer, also Paul Hill – who spent 15 years in a British jail, wrongfully convicted in the Guilford Four case – and three Irish representatives, are in Bogotá this week to follow the trial process of the Irishmen.

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New York, NY – Caitriona Ruane, the national chairperson of the Bring Them Home Campaign in Ireland, was here Sept. 5 to highlight the situation facing the Colombia Three. The Colombia Three, Jim Monaghan, Niall Connelly and Martin McCauley, all from Ireland, have spent over two years in prison in Colombia awaiting trail and sentencing. They are charged with training members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in guerrilla warfare.

The three men were arrested in August 2001, after visiting the demilitarized zone established as part of a failed peace process. Since then, they have been held in some of Colombia’s most notorious prisons.

The men have stated in open court that they traveled to the demilitarized zone to speak with people there about the peace process. At the time it was common for outsiders to travel into the demilitarized zone. Visitors to the zone included journalists and various international dignitaries and human rights activists.

Ruane, along with Colombian lawyer for the men, Pedro Mahecha Avila, talked about the case of the three and explained how the war in Colombia has seriously undermined the legitimacy of the country’s legal system. Of particular concern is the widespread use of false or fabricated evidence in cases concerning the insurgency, and the pressures from state and right-wing paramilitaries which impede lawyers and judges from carrying out their professional functions. Human rights organizations have unanimously condemned Colombian prosecutors’ common practice of relying on testimony provided by paid military informers.

Pedro Mahecha Avila explained how the justice system in Colombia is being used as a counter-insurgency tool in the case of the three men. The U.S. State Department, along with members of the British government, wants the men convicted, in an effort to lend legitimacy to the U.S. ‘war on terror.’ The U.S. in particular has vested interest in propping up the Colombian regime, due to its economic and geopolitical interests in the region. It has used military and economic aid to help the Colombian government wage war on its own population through Plan Colombia, which pumps billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia to prevent the FARC and other guerilla organizations from taking power.

After laying out how the case is a fame-up – with unreliable witnesses, perjured statements that put the men in Colombia at times when they were, in fact, in Ireland and false forensic evidence – Ruane talked about the prison conditions faced by the three. They are surrounded by right-wing paramilitaries, confined to a small cell with little room to move and allowed little exercise per day. She noted a very real threat to the men’s lives from the right-wing paramilitaries in the prisons, and spoke of how the men’s food was being poisoned at one point.

When brought to trial, the men faced a one-judge, no-jury court. At the trial’s end in August, the judge announced he wouldn’t deliver a verdict until December 2003. The case for their innocence is very strong, but due to the political situation in Colombia and pressure from the U.S. and British governments, it is unclear if the judge will be allowed to reach the right decision. If convicted, the men face up to 20 years in a Colombian prison.

Ruane ended her presentation by explaining how the campaign to free the three and bring them back to Ireland was growing. “As usual, it’s the working class in Ireland who have been the backbone of the Bring Them Home Campaign. Every mountain has been climbed, walks have been sponsored, concerts and benefits have been held and money raised to fight their case.” She went on to state that, “Unfortunately in Ireland we have had a lot of experience in fighting these cases, from the Guildford Four to the Birmingham Six and Ballymurphy Seven, and we have had many long years of experience in fighting miscarriages of justice. If the men are convicted, make no mistake, there will be a long, hard-fought campaign to see that justice is done.”

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The Colombia Three, Jim Monaghan, Niall Connelly and Martin McCauley, all from Ireland, were recently acquitted after having spent almost three years in prison in Colombia. The three men were found innocent of charges that they were in Colombia to train the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) in guerrilla warfare tactics aimed at overthrowing the Colombian government. They were arrested in August 2001 after visiting the demilitarized zone (established as part of a failed peace process) and have been held in some of Colombia’s most notorious and dangerous prisons since then.

Despite massive pressure from the Colombian, U.S. and British governments, Judge Jairo Acosta found that there was no evidence against the men other than that they were traveling on false passports. In a significant legal judgment, he ordered that the witnesses against the men be investigated for perjury. There is strong evidence that these witnesses had been coached by military intelligence into fabricating accounts of watching the three Irishmen training guerillas, when in fact they were proven to be in Ireland on the dates given.

The three had traveled to Colombia on false passports because of their role as prominent activists in the Irish Republican movement. Had they used their own passports, they most likely would have been denied access to the country. As participants in the peace process currently underway in Ireland, the three men had traveled to Colombia to study and share ideas about the Colombian peace negotiations that were going on at the time.

The declaration of the men’s innocence is a major victory for the grassroots campaign to free the men. It is also a source of deep embarrassment for the Colombian government and its backers in the U.S. government.

The U.S. State Department, along with members of the British government, wanted the men convicted in order to lend legitimacy to their international ‘war on terror.’ The U.S. in particular was seeking justification for its financial support of the Colombian regime under the auspices of ‘combating terrorism.’ In reality, this ‘war’ is driven by U.S. economic and geopolitical interests in the region. It has used military and economic aid to help the Colombian government wage war on its own population through Plan Colombia, renamed the Andean Initiative, which pumps billions of dollars of military aid into Colombia to prevent the FARC and other guerilla organizations from taking power and threatening U.S. interests.

The proven innocence of the Colombia Three is an important win for activists and campaigners concerned with justice, dignity and equality in Colombia and in Ireland. The pressure and commitment of the ‘Bring them Home’ campaign in Ireland focused international attention on the case of the Three, and forced elected representatives to take a stance. It played a vital role in the legal defense of the men and in producing evidence and observers at the trial. If it were not for this level of grassroots support and activism from the working class in Ireland and dedicated activists in the U.S. and elsewhere, a very different verdict may have been reached. While we should celebrate and acknowledge this victory, we also need to keep up the pressure on the Colombian government. Colombian prosecutors are appealing the case, and the three Irishmen cannot return home until the appeal issue is resolved.

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