Sinn Féin has tonight denied that a man arrested in Colombia was the party's Latin American representative.
Earlier this evening, Havana said one of three suspected men arrested in Colombia on charges of training Marxist rebels was Sinn Féin's representative in Latin America.
"Mr Niall Terence Connolly is the official representative of Sinn Féin for Cuba and Latin America," Ms Aymee Hernandez, a spokeswoman for President Fidel Castro's government, claimed.
The public prosecutor's office in Bogota, has said it will decide within days whether to try or free the three, all from Northern Ireland.
Authorities suspect the trio had been training the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest guerrilla group, in bomb-making and the fabrication of non-conventional weapons.
"We want to make it quite clear that the presence of Mr Connolly in Colombia has no connection with the official and legal activities he was carrying out in Havana," Ms Hernandez said.
