A US Congressional Committee has compiled a dossier claiming that the deadly effectiveness of the FARC guerrilla movement in Colombia was strengthened as a result of IRA training, according to reliable sources.
The document reports that innocent people were killed directly as a result of the alleged IRA training of FARC guerrillas, the sources said last night. It adds that the IRA had a strong relationship with the guerrilla organisation and that as many as 15 IRA members were involved in training in Colombia, The Irish Times has learned.
Three republicans - Mr James Monaghan, Mr Martin McCauley and Mr Niall Connolly - are on remand in prison in Colombia since their arrest last August as they tried to leave Bogota airport using false passports.However, according to this information as many as 15 republicans have worked in the past with FARC.
Moreover, it is also claimed that the effectiveness of FARC was greatly enhanced as a result of the alleged training by the IRA. It has already been claimed that the training included improving expertise in bomb-making and sophisticated mortar technology, with which the IRA was adept.
The document also states that innocent people were killed by FARC because of the training and that US interests were badly damaged as a result of this alleged relationship between FARC and the IRA, the sources said.
On Wednesday, the US Congressional Committee on International Relations will address the issue of the so-called Colombia Three and their relationship with FARC. There has already been some briefing of what the committee has elicited, which could be highly damaging to Sinn Féin.
The party is meeting in Belfast this evening to decide whether party president Mr Gerry Adams should address the committee. Mr Adams said last week that his legal advice was not to attend the hearing. He added that the party would decide today whether he should take up an invitation to attend hearings by the US House Committee on International Relations on the links between the IRA and FARC.
At a press conference in Dublin yesterday, he said: "My instinct is to go and have this out but this increasingly appears to be little to do with Ireland, to be all to do with those in Columbia who want funding for their own purposes and if you look at the list of people who have been requested or who are going to the hearing, you will see what I mean, so some of our people are obviously very cagey about all of that."
A well-placed source said last night: "If this dossier is disclosed at the congressional hearing on Wednesday, I think Sinn Féin can say goodbye to their generous funding from Irish-America".
The information in the congressional document is understood to have been mainly compiled by the Colombian military, the US State Department and the Drugs Enforcement Agency. Sinn Féin is conscious that this could prove embarrassing for the party.
One source last night said the party feared the committee was following a particular agenda which would allow the US to increase its military role in Colombia and that republicans could be scapegoated to facilitate this exercise.
In a recent article in the Washington Post, the Colombian President, Mr Andres Pastrana, claimed that the three men in detention had trained FARC guerrillas, despite the fact that the case against them had yet to be heard.If convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison.