Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, who covered the trial in Bogota, reports on the background to the case of the so-called "Colombia Three".
It must have come as quite a shock. The three men travelling under assumed names had arrived at Bogota's El Dorado airport on an internal flight on August 11th, 2001.
They must have been weary from all the sun in the sweltering jungle and steamy pasturelands of southern Colombia.
The trio had come from the so-called demilitarised zone controlled by Colombia's main rebel army, the FARC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). This area, about the size of Switzerland, was ceded to the guerrillas by Colombia's president at the time, Andres Pastrana.
He was trying to broker a peace deal with one of the world's largest guerrilla forces, and hopes were high for bringing an end to the civil war which had ravaged Colombia since the early 1960s.
The three men were no ordinary travellers. All of them were Irish republicans and two had received jail sentences for their activities. James "Mortar" Monaghan, aged 56 at that time, was a well-known figure in republican circles back home.
In an episode worthy of South American politics, he escaped from a prison cell in Dublin's Green Street in 1976 following an explosion at the courthouse. Martin McCauley was 18 years younger, but had featured in one of the more dramatic and tragic incidents of the Troubles while still in his teens.
With another youngster, he was ambushed by the security forces who were monitoring an arms cache in an isolated farmyard near Lurgan, Co Armagh. The other youth, Michael Tighe (17), was shot dead.
The event was captured on tape, but efforts to acquire it during the subsequent "Stalker Inquiry" to see if the two youngsters were given any warning, turned out to be unsuccessful.
The third man was Niall Connolly, youngest in the group and the only one with fluent Spanish. He had been a development aid worker in Latin America and was now based in Cuba. Although the party denied it initially, he was Sinn Féin's man in Havana.
A native of south Dublin, an area not known for generating revolutionaries, he had no previous convictions.
Clever lawyers for the men have since pointed out that the passports they were travelling on were not actually false. The names were just wrong. But someone (generally believed to be British Intelligence) knew their movements in any case.
When they arrived at Bogota Airport from the FARC-controlled town of San Vicente del Caguan, the Colombian military were waiting. Capt Hubert Pullido and his men pulled the trio in for questioning.
Their supporters subsequently objected to this, asserting that arrest by the military is only permitted when a crime is actually being committed.
There was little trouble penetrating the cover of both Monaghan and McCauley, as the authorities in the United Kingdom were able to identify their fingerprints. Connolly was more difficult: he was posing as David Bracken. Although this was the pseudonym of the assassin in Frederick Forsyth's novel, The Day of the Jackal, the real David Bracken had in fact died as a small child.
The military contacted the US embassy in Bogota and a mobile forensic machine from the embassy was used to examine the men's clothing and baggage.
Initially, it found traces of cocaine and explosives, but this test was adjudged illegal because there were no representatives of the Colombian prosecutor's office in attendance, only military personnel.
A second test, conducted after the arrival of the Colombian civil authorities, found only explosives.
However, a later series of more than 100 laboratory examinations conducted by the Colombians themselves contradicted this finding. Dr Keith Borer, a British forensics specialist called by the defence team, told the court subsequently that the test with the US machine was unreliable, because (a) the military detention area could have been contaminated with explosive substances, and (b) proper procedures were not followed.
Back home the arrests caused convulsions in the peace process. It seemed to confirm suspicions that the republican movement, instead of taking a genuine turn away from violence, was actually leading a double life. One hand might hold a ballot-paper, but the other still retained the Armalite.
Unionists, in particular, expressed a feeling of betrayal and, as always, there were many in their ranks to say, "I told you so".
Nevertheless, it might all have come to nothing were it not for "9/11". Early media coverage suggests that the case might have been dropped for lack of evidence.
Three men using false names were arrested at El Dorado airport, but it was another matter entirely to prove that they were up to no good in the FARC zone.
Then the World Trade Centre was attacked and everything changed. The "Colombia Three" were now being seen as part of the international terrorist conspiracy which must be fought against and destroyed.
Eventually, after a protracted pre-trial investigation, public hearings in the case began at a Bogota courthouse. The men stayed away, protesting that they could not get a fair trial. The two basic charges were, training an illegal guerrilla army in bomb-making techniques and using false public documentation. The day the trial started, by strange coincidence, was also the day of a police raid and seizure of documents at the Sinn Féin offices in Stormont.
The first charge carried a sentence of eight to 14 years, the second incurred a possible two to eight years. Each of the three could potentially have been sent away for 22 years. Monaghan would be 78 when he got out, McCauley and Connolly in their late 50s or early 60s.
Given the atmosphere in Colombian jails, their chances of surviving to the end of their sentences were not rated very highly.
The trial began in October 2002 and dragged on until August 2003. The key questions were: 1) Were the three men in the FARC zone at the time alleged? and 2) What were they doing there?
Colombia is a beautiful but very frightening place and the atmosphere surrounding this terror trial was fraught in the extreme. The first day was marked by a terrifying incident in which a large window fell from the 17th floor of a building facing the courthouse. The glass showered down on the crowd below, which was mainly composed of journalists and TV crews. The possibility of an attack on the courthouse by either supporters or enemies of the accused was at the back of many peoples' minds and this sudden event seemed to confirm that something was afoot.
Happily, it proved that the glass was merely a result of strong winds blowing from the foothills of the Andes.
Nevertheless, security was tight, everyone was frisked before hearings and the fifth-floor courtroom was guarded by heavily-armed security men and women with flak jackets and automatic weapons.
The prosecution case encountered considerable difficulty, particularly in producing witnesses. Their charges against the accused rested mainly on testimony from alleged FARC deserters. It hardly needs saying that these are a shy breed.
One man was on a reintegration programme for ex-guerrillas and his whereabouts could not be traced. Another refused to come to Bogota because he was afraid of being ambushed or kidnapped on the way.
Eventually the first witness appeared in court but demanded guarantees of safety for himself and his family. The court decided to hold a special session in the city of Medellin to facilitate the second witness. The FARC deserters claimed to have seen the three Irishmen giving classes in bomb-making in the demilitarised zone at particular times. This was disputed by the defence who produced witnesses and documentation in support of their claim that the trio had been in other places, doing other things, when they were supposed to be in FARC-land.
For example, the First Secretary at the Irish Embassy in Mexico, Ms Síle Maguire, gave evidence that Connolly attended a dinner she hosted in Havana for a visiting Irish parliamentary delegation, including TDs Mr Jim O'Keeffe and Mr Ben Briscoe and Senator Madeleine Taylor-Quinn, on January 17th, 2001. The prosecution had claimed he was in Colombia at the time, giving extramural classes rather than socialising with Irish politicians.
Videos were brought forward by the defence which purported to show Monaghan taking part in different events in Dublin and Belfast on February 7th, 21st and 22nd, 2001, when the prosecution claimed he was in the FARC zone.
The videos were date-stamped but the prosecution said they were doctored. Monaghan even referred to an article in The Irish Times by a freelance journalist - the subject happened to be Colombia - and this was also produced as evidence.
Dr Borer challenged the validity of the tests carried out in the aftermath of the arrests. Employment records were also produced with a view to discrediting prosecution claims.
The prosecution referred to a technical training manual allegedly used in the training course, but this turned out to be a book about international terrorism by two British journalists, published 23 years previously.
At the end of the day, the issue turned ... on the credibility of the two prosecution eye-witnesses versus the testimony and documentation for the defence.
The Colombian establishment was in no doubt and there were constant references to the guilt of the three men by leading political and military figures, a subject of bitter complaint from the Bring Them Home Campaign, a support organisation led by Ms Caitríona Ruane, who spoke out in English and Spanish on behalf of the accused and organised delegations of Irish, US and Australian politicians and lawyers to visit them in jail.
Ms Ruane has since been elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Sinn Féin. The judge, Dr Jairo Acosta, listened to everything with an impassive expression.
What he was thinking was anybody's guess but he impressed all with his quietly courteous handling of these tense and difficult proceedings. Colombian justice has its informal aspects and European journalists were astonished to see the judge being asked a question by a reporter sitting in the well of the court.
When the proceedings came to an end last August, it was pointed out that the judge would normally have 15 working days to come up with a verdict. But the months passed and still there was no ruling.
There were allegations of political pressure but the judge protested from behind a desk piled with papers and documents that his workload did not permit him to get around to it.
In the meantime, the fate of the three accused and possibly the future of the peace process hung in the balance.