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23/04/2002
Adams declines to attend US Congressional hearing
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams will not be attending a US Congressional committee investigating links between the IRA and Colombian rebels.
The hearings entitled 'The IRA in Colombia - the Global Links of International Terrorism' are due to begin in Washington on Wednesday.
US congressmen had wanted to question Mr Adams directly about the arrests in Colombia last August of three Irishmen - Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley.
However, Mr Adams told a press conference in Belfast on Tuesday April 23 he had offered to meet the committee the next time he was in Washington.
He said: “My priorities in approaching this important matter has been to defend the peace process, to defend Sinn Fein's essential contribution to it, and to give proper consideration to the plight of the three men presently in detention in Colombia, their right to a fair trial and the anxieties of their families".
He added: “I have received legal advice from the legal representatives of these three men which argues that the congressional hearings and my presence at them could well be prejudicial to any possibility of a fair trial".
Mr Adams said he had addressed his concerns in a letter to the chairman of the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Congressman Henry Hyde.
Speaking in advance of the UUP accepted motion for debate calling on the Secretary of State to reassess the IRA ceasefire UUP assembly member James Leslie said: “Mr Adams may not be prepared to stand up and be counted in the USA but he will not be able to evade scrutiny here on Monday.”
Mr. Leslie added: “This is a clear example of Sinn Fein running scared. What about all the unanswered questions - Sinn Fein’s relationship to FARC? Have other people been to Colombia? What other terrorist organisations are they related to?
“The Provisional movement are clearly not going to come clean. This is an affront to the biggest democracy in the world.”
Last month, Colombian prosecutors formally charged three IRA suspects with teaching bomb making to Marxist rebels.
Prosecutors passed the case to a federal judge six months after the three men were arrested while leaving an area controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The three men face up to eight years in jail if convicted. Two of the men are from the Republic of Ireland and one is from Northern Ireland.
(AMcE)
The hearings entitled 'The IRA in Colombia - the Global Links of International Terrorism' are due to begin in Washington on Wednesday.
US congressmen had wanted to question Mr Adams directly about the arrests in Colombia last August of three Irishmen - Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley.
However, Mr Adams told a press conference in Belfast on Tuesday April 23 he had offered to meet the committee the next time he was in Washington.
He said: “My priorities in approaching this important matter has been to defend the peace process, to defend Sinn Fein's essential contribution to it, and to give proper consideration to the plight of the three men presently in detention in Colombia, their right to a fair trial and the anxieties of their families".
He added: “I have received legal advice from the legal representatives of these three men which argues that the congressional hearings and my presence at them could well be prejudicial to any possibility of a fair trial".
Mr Adams said he had addressed his concerns in a letter to the chairman of the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Congressman Henry Hyde.
Speaking in advance of the UUP accepted motion for debate calling on the Secretary of State to reassess the IRA ceasefire UUP assembly member James Leslie said: “Mr Adams may not be prepared to stand up and be counted in the USA but he will not be able to evade scrutiny here on Monday.”
Mr. Leslie added: “This is a clear example of Sinn Fein running scared. What about all the unanswered questions - Sinn Fein’s relationship to FARC? Have other people been to Colombia? What other terrorist organisations are they related to?
“The Provisional movement are clearly not going to come clean. This is an affront to the biggest democracy in the world.”
Last month, Colombian prosecutors formally charged three IRA suspects with teaching bomb making to Marxist rebels.
Prosecutors passed the case to a federal judge six months after the three men were arrested while leaving an area controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The three men face up to eight years in jail if convicted. Two of the men are from the Republic of Ireland and one is from Northern Ireland.
(AMcE)
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