North reaction: Sinn Féin Assembly members Mr Gerry Kelly and Ms Caitríona Ruane, who is also the co-ordinator of the Bring Them Home Campaign, travel to Colombia today to meet the lawyers for the three Irishmen they say were "wrongfully convicted" of training FARC guerillas.
Ms Ruane said: "I do not know where they are at the moment. The last time I saw them was the night we took them out of jail in June."
Unionists issued warnings to the Irish Government not to seek clemency for the men and claimed their 17-year sentences proved Sinn Féin's unsuitability for government in Northern Ireland.
Mr David Burnside, the Ulster Unionist South Antrim MP, said: "This could develop into a major diplomatic incident.
"It will be a test of whether the Irish Republic really has turned over a new leaf in the fight against terrorism."
Mr Burnside, a leading critic of his party leader Mr David Trimble, claimed the sentences proved Sinn Féin was not fit to share power in Northern Ireland.
He said he would table a question in the House of Commons on Monday, urging the Foreign Office to tell Dublin not to provide immunity.
DUP Assembly member Mr Sammy Wilson said the sentences were a welcome Christmas present. He said people had "been tortured by the IRA for 30 years and sickened by the way the government rolled over to appease these gangsters".
"At least one government, albeit on the other side of the world, has not bowed to the threats and whingeing of republicans," he added.
Mr Wilson said Sinn Féin did not condemn the Colombian courts when the three men were acquitted. "But of course now that the verdict has changed we see IRA/Sinn Féin back into whingeing mode again."
He added: "The first people they run to is the Irish Government. For the time being at least they have been shown the door and hopefully the Irish Government will stick to its non-interventionist line."
For the SDLP, Mr Alban Maginness said: "These three men were originally convicted of travelling on false passports but acquitted of the terrorism charges. That acquittal was appealed and the men have now been found guilty on the terrorism charges.
"In our law, a person who is acquitted cannot later be convicted in appeal - and that is how the SDLP believes things should be in Colombia." Mr Maginness said the SDLP agreed with the Irish Government that the sentences were too severe.
Fianna Fáil's Senator Mary White, who visited Colombia seven times to visit the men and witness the trial, urged the Government to raise the matter immediately with the Colombian authorities, reports Mark Hennessy.
"This is a very shocking, very troubling judgment. There is a sense of unreality about all of it," she said, and there had been "absolutely no evidence" that the men were guilty of the main charge, though she acknowledged that they had travelled on false passports.
Republican ex-prisoners frequently travelled on false passports, she said, because of difficulties they faced with immigration authorities.
"These men are politicians. Now they may not be politicians like you would find in Leinster House but they are, to my mind, politicians. I know them. They are politicians," she said.