Irish Trio 'have Fled Colombia'

Sinn Féin members were last night on their way to Colombia as Interpol joined in the hunt for three men linked to the IRA who are on the run from police.

Officials in Bogotá said yesterday Niall Connolly, 38, James Monaghan, 58, and Michael McCauley, 41, who were sentenced by the appeal court on Thursday to 17 years in jail for training Marxist rebels in Colombia, had fled the country. Luis Camilio Osorio, the attorney general, asked for international cooperation to help find them.

The men went into hiding last June after being released from prison where they were serving sentences for travelling on false documents. But they were ordered to stay in the country until the outcome of a prosecution appeal against their acquittal on the more serious charge of training Farc rebels. On Thursday the appeal court overturned the not guilty verdicts and imposed the long jail terms.

Caitriona Ruane, a Sinn Féin Northern Ireland assembly member who has campaigned for the men's release, was flying to Colombia last night with colleagues to talk to their lawyers and officials as defence lawyers considered making an extraordinary appeal to the supreme court.

She dismissed claims that the men had fled Colombia but refused to be drawn on their whereabouts. Ms Ruane saw the men shortly after they were whisked out of Bogotá's La Modelo prison to go into hiding claiming their lives were in danger from rightwing death squads.

Pedro Mahecha, Monaghan's defence attorney, disputed the idea that they had left the country. However he declined to say whether he or lawyers for the other two were in contact with the men.