Walking through the crowded streets of Bogotβ, sidestepping hawkers, beggars and police, I recall the solemn promise I made three years before - never to return to Colombia.
The murder of Eduardo Umana Mendoza, a human-rights lawyer and friend, sealed my decision to stay away. Two men and a woman arrived at his Bogotβ apartment early one morning in April 1998, posing as journalists. The killers unpacked machine-guns and pistols instead of lenses and tripod.
In my waking dream I can see the look of surprise on Eduardo's face, for he knows his time has come. The bullets penetrate his impeccable white shirt; small red stains spread out from the multiple entry points, his large frame slowly crumples to the floor, his face frozen in disbelief. He had survived several previous assassination attempts, including one lucky escape on his way to meet me in a cafΘ. I used to hate meeting him in public, terrified of being killed in a hail of bullets directed at him.
Colombians are prisoners of the past, trapped in a narrative of revenge which is handed on, like an Olympic torch, to each new generation. "Don't trust anyone," the old newspaper seller tells me, giving out to me for putting my change into my trouser pocket. "They'll take the money and your trousers," she adds.
The purpose of my return is to investigate the case of three Irishmen detained in August on suspicion of training left-wing rebels. My Irish citizenship has become a potential liability, it seems, as casual conversations become hushed confabulations. "Forget your newspaper and get the hell out of here," says a government official. "There is no middle ground."
The confabulator in the cafΘ then introduces me to Juan Carranza, whose brother Ramiro has been kidnapped by Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC): "We know exactly where he is," says Juan. "But the knowledge serves no purpose."
Colombia's attorney-general recently authorised a rescue operation to free his own wife, also kidnapped by FARC guerrillas. The operation was a disaster and the corpse, dressed in military fatigues, was recovered with two bullets to the head. Carranza's brother is the director of foreign affairs inside Colombia's secret police.
The Colombian conflict pre-dates the rise of drug traffickers and guerrillas.
In April 1948, Jorge Gaitan, a charismatic politician who threatened the oligarchy's grip on the political system, was assassinated, unleashing a wave of violence which has claimed 250,000 deaths. Thousands of peasant farmers sought refuge in remote mountain areas, living in "independent republics" under Communist Party influence. The FARC emerged from the ashes of these independent republics; peasant farmers who originally fled political violence. The rebel group has 16,000 combatants and controls a huge swathe of rural territory, including the despeje, a free zone in the Caguan region, ceded by the government to facilitate peace talks in 1999. The FARC survived the 1970s and 1980s thanks to its continuing support base of peasant farmers and its promise to deliver social justice.
Now, however, the FARC's claim to legitimacy as an organisation struggling for social justice is severely compromised by its involvement in drug-trafficking, its kidnapping of civilians and its refusal to consult with civil society over the possible outcome of peace talks. The FARC, now a wealthy organisation, has expanded its considerable military capacity at the expense of political development. Its assets have recently been frozen by US and British authorities and it has appeared on the US State Department list of terror organisations since 1997.
However, human rights organisations have frequently declared that the term "terrorist" could equally apply to the Colombian army, which is accused of massacring civilians and collaborating with right-wing death squads.
This US announcement marked a new low in the FARC's battle for international recognition. In recent years, the rebels maintained political representatives in New York and Mexico City, while secret meetings were arranged with US government officials in Costa Rica. The rebels appeared to be drifting in from the cold.
In the wake of the September 11th terror attacks in the US, the FARC has become totally isolated. The on-off peace talks have reached the point of collapse and an all-out war now seems inevitable.
In 1997, after a savage mountain trek in the company of two reluctant indigenous guides, I met a battalion of FARC troops.
Comandante Juan, the local FARC leader, got straight to the point. "Any assets?" he asked brusquely, "A house? A car?" Comandante Juan wanted to find out what I was worth. The results disappointed him, but we talked anyway, always returning to the same point: sooner or later, he insisted, the FARC would seize power by force of arms.
A year later, the FARC won a string of military victories over the Colombian army throughout rural Colombia. Temporary roadblocks were thrown up within earshot of Bogotβ. Conservative candidate Andres Pastrana, fighting to win the presidency, made a secret trip to the jungle and secured his winning ticket: a photo with Manuel Marulanda, the FARC's historic leader.
Following the three Irishmen's visit to San Vicente de Caguan, in the despeje, they were detained by the Colombian authorities while waiting to board an international flight at Bogotβ airport. They claimed they had visited the Caguan to discuss the Irish and Colombian peace processes, a declaration greeted with scepticism in view of the fact that they were travelling on false passports.
Two of the men, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan, have past convictions for IRA terror offences. The third man, however, Niall Connolly, has lived in Latin America for the past decade.We have crossed paths on occasion. While I have searched for a quote that might alter the course of history, Connolly has dug his hands into the earth, building houses for hurricane victims in Honduras, taking concrete steps to alleviate the poverty about which I write.Sinn FΘin was embarrassed by the timing of the arrest of the three men, which came during delicate negotiations to keep the Northern Ireland peace process on track. Sinn FΘin president Gerry Adams initially denied all knowledge of the three men and their Colombian mission. The Cuban government, sympathetic to Sinn FΘin, contradicted Adams, saying Connolly was Sinn FΘin's accredited representative on the Caribbean island. Adams finally acknowledged Connolly as a party member.
The three men are now locked into a complex legal process, which, according to Colombian justice officials, could take two years to come to trial. The fate of the three hinges largely on political events in the coming year. If the Colombian peace process prospers, and a rebel ceasefire is secured, then the claim to a political mission gathers credibility. If the peace process collapses, as now seems likely, the Colombian government will claim that the FARC used the despeje free zone to make international contacts and prepare for war.
The role of the Irish visitors will be judged in this context. The events leading up to the arrest of the three men have been supplied by Colombian intelligence sources, a party to the conflict. The Colombian army has been a consistent critic of the Colombian peace process, with army generals outraged at the decision to grant FARC a free zone that confers legitimacy on a "gang of subversive snakes". The Colombian army has an appalling human rights record, actively collaborating with right-wing paramilitaries. The two forces are responsible for over 80 per cent of politically-motivated killings, with FARC rebels responsible for the other deaths.
Last year, the US unveiled a $1.3 billion military package, Plan Colombia, to combat drugs and guerrillas, heightening fears that the conflict will escalate.
The FARC zone has been a hotbed of activity in the past two years, as guests such as Richard Grass, head of the New York Stock Exchange, rub shoulders with government spies, journalists and local farmers.
The Colombian army says that it was a spy inside the FARC zone who informed it in May that the rebels were expecting a visit from a group of foreigners, for training purposes. The army then began to monitor foreign arrivals at Bogotβ airport.
Monaghan and McCauley arrived in the last week of June, their sparse luggage and vague answers attracting attention during routine immigration procedures. The two checked into the Charleston Hotel, in the north of the city, where they left their rooms only once in two days, for a brief walk around the block. All this information was obtained from army intelligence reports.
On July 3rd, the two men left their hotel for the airport, where they met Connolly as he arrived into the country. The three immediately boarded a flight to the rebel enclave. They landed at San Vicente de Caguan, inside the rebel zone, where they booked into a hotel, all under the watchful gaze of army informers. The next day, two FARC rebels arrived in a blue van to whisk the Irishmen deeper into rebel territory.
"At that point, investigators lost the trail of the Irishmen but they had no doubt that they were going to meet FARC guerrillas for something big," according to extracts of an army intelligence report which I have seen.
Some 20 army spies waited for the three men to return. As days turned to weeks, the authorities feared they had lost their suspects. On August 10th, an informer passed on a message; the three men would depart the next day. A huge covert operation was put in place around Bogotβ airport. The three men were detained as they attempted to board an Air France flight to Europe.
Once arrested, Connolly, Monaghan and McCauley were taken to Colombia's army battalion Number 13, in Puerto Aranda, from where they were transferred to the Modelo prison. A brief communiquΘ from the prosecutor-general's office, dated August 21st, announced that the three men were being held on suspicion of "using false documents and training for illegal activities". Under Colombian law, the first charge could merit a two-year sentence while the second can result in 20 to 40 years behind bars.
In the days following the arrests, the Irish media reported that clothes belonging to the three men had traced positive for drugs and explosives, and that video footage proved the men had trained FARC rebels. Days later, the drug traces and the video footage had disappeared while the tests for explosives proved both negative and positive, in conflicting test results from Colombia and the US.
Connolly, Monaghan and McCauley feared for their lives inside the prison, a dangerous place for suspects linked to left-wing rebels. The Irishmen were transferred to a temporary holding centre run by the Dijin, or judicial police, thanks in part to the diplomatic efforts of officials from the Irish Embassy in Mexico City.
The three men were put into separate cells, leaving the two non-Spanish speakers, Monaghan and McCauley, at a considerable disadvantage.
"They are in a very poor psychological state," says Agustin Jimenez, a lawyer working for a prisoner solidarity committee. Connolly is currently sifting through two bulky folders containing the book of evidence, which he must translate into English for the other two men.
My request to visit the men was turned down last month.
The Dijin cells are utterly unsatisfactory for a long-term stay. Under Colombian law prisoners should not be kept there for more than 36 hours, but the three Irishmen spent more than 36 days there, before securing a transfer to La Picota prison.
"The Irishmen will be admired and respected there," says Jimenez, as political prisoners maintain control of their own wings.
Colombia's justice system obliges suspects to prove their innocence. The UN High Commission for Human Rights condemned the system at a UN General Assembly meeting in 1998. "It is worrying that in some cases the efficiency of employees at the prosecutor-general's office is measured in terms of the number of accusatory resolutions made," read the UNHCR statement, "and that such figures determine permanence and promotion within the institution." Colombia's prison system also came in for criticism as 612 inmates have met violent deaths in the past four years, or one every three days, a fatality rate comparable to the war years in Northern Ireland.
In the prosecutor-general's office in Bogotβ, spokeswoman Carolina Sanchez tells me that a petition has been sent to Ireland and Britain to assess the veracity of information obtained in Colombia about the three men.
Would the Irishmen get a fair trial? "We have had no complaints from relatives or anyone else about the case," says Carolina Sanchez. The case for the prosecution was damaged by the sudden disappearance of a protected witness late last month, a policeman who walked out without explanation. "He wanted too much too fast," she says. The former witness demanded relocation to the US, along with his family. There has been speculation he may have been killed, but I was informed, through a reliable intermediary, that the former witness is alive and living in a rural town, but, fearing for his safety, he refused to meet me.
There is a previous legal case with curious parallels to the Irish three. In October 1997, a Dutchman, detained as he left a FARC control zone, was accused of training rebels and of launching an explosives attack on an army convoy. However, the case fell apart and the man was released two months after his arrest and confession, obtained under torture. When I ask Dr Carlos Sanchez, head of the prosecutor-general's anti-terror unit, to discuss the case, he tells me he has no recollection of it.
Colombian authorities taped a conversation which reportedly took place between a FARC rebel leader and a subordinate, discussing the three monos (monkeys) who came from "far off" to offer training. The word "semtex" was allegedly mentioned. Such information has never been sufficient to try a suspect in Colombia.
"On the back of a minor crime," says their defence lawyer Reynaldo Villalba, referring to the false passports, "the authorities have built a story of enormous proportions."
However, the nature of the minor crime fuels suspicion of a far greater crime and negative attitudes to the FARC will cloud judgment in the case. "Colombians do not believe anything the FARC says or does," says Diana Rojas, a political analyst. "The Irishmen will be judged more on the FARC's record than on any hostility toward them."
Recently, relatives of the men, accompanied by lawyers, were refused state permission to visit the FARC zone, where they hoped to interview witnesses who may have spoken to the Irishmen. The UN High Commission for Peace, backed by Colombia's secret service, refused permission. The prosecutor-general's office sees little point in such a visit: "Any witness they find would have to come and testify here in this building," says Carolina Sanchez in Bogotβ. However, Carlos Sanchez, head of the anti-terror unit, offers to provide the resources and security to bring any witness for the defence to Bogotβ, as long as they have no outstanding warrants to their name. This offer can only be taken up if Colombian authorities reverse their earlier decision to prohibit entry by relatives and lawyers of the prisoners to the zone.
The case of the Irish three will ultimately be a footnote in the history of Colombia's 50-year war. Colombia is in a bitter state of conflict. The army represses with impunity, the courts criminalise legal protest, the rebels ignore the people they claim to represent, the paramilitaries massacre social activists and the US government hovers in the background, waiting to snatch the spoils of war, a projected free-trade zone stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.
There are no signs of an early release for the three Irishmen.