WHEN WILL GERRY ADAMS BE SITTING NEXT TO MILOSEVIC?

Colombia mortar attack rebels 'IRA trained' (Frank Khan and Susan Garraty, Irish Independent)

IRA-trained Colombian rebels were responsible for the mortar attacks that killed 21 people last week, security forces in the South American country said last night.

"There is no doubt that behind these attacks is the training of the IRA," said General Reynaldo Castellanos, a divisional commander, in the capital Bogota. [...]

Three Irishmen, James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley, arrested a year ago, are awaiting trial in October accused of training Marxist guerrillas in the use of explosives and urban terrorism. They have denied links with Farc.

Since February, the Farc guerrillas have taken their 38-year war from the countryside into the cities.

Their most audacious urban operation yet was unleashed last Wednesday when they fired mortars at the presidential palace just as the new president, Alvaro Uribe, an Oxford-educated right-winger, was being sworn in.

Colombian and British security experts said the Farc operation had all the hallmarks of the IRA, and brought to mind the mortars fired at No 10 Downing Street in 1991.

"It seems to be a classic IRA operation," said a former British army officer, a bomb disposal expert who specialised in IRA mortars.

The Oval Office carpets have been cleaned since Bill Clinton left, so most of the evidence that he was there is probably gone. But will anything ever cleanse the stench of evil that Yassir Arafat and Gerry Adams left behind in the White House? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2002 12:27 PM