Colombian attacks 'have hallmark of IRA'

If Colombian security forces are to be believed, the guilt of three alleged IRA men who have just marked their first year in a Colombian prison is proven with every new urban attack by the country's Marxist guerrillas.

James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley were arrested this time last year as they stepped off a plane that had just come from the government-granted safe haven of the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The men, who deny all links with the IRA or Colombian rebels, are awaiting trial on charges of training the guerrillas in explosives and urban terrorism.

The rebels' safe haven is now gone, invaded by the Colombian army after the previous president, Andres Pastrana, called off the three-year peace process with the FARC in February this year.

Since February the guerrillas have brought their 38-year war, previously restricted to the countryside, into the cities.

In their most daring operation to date, they welcomed the new president Alvaro Uribe, an Oxford-educated right-winger, by firing mortars at the presidential palace as he was sworn in, despite the most intensive security operation the capital had ever seen.

"There is no doubt that behind this attack is the training of the IRA," said Colombian general Reynaldo Castellanos.

The IRA, for its part, has repeatedly denied any "military" involvement in Colombia.

But it is not just the Colombians who see the tactics and training of the IRA behind the FARC's urban operations.

When the audacious operation was described to a former British bomb disposal officer who specialised in IRA mortars, he saw "all the fingerprints of the Provisional IRA" in Wednesday's attack on the presidential palace.

Planned operation

The attack had been months in the planning, and the FARC had rented two houses.

One was close to the capital's military academy in the north of the city, the other just four blocks from the Presidential Palace and Congress buildings.

Mortar lines were set up there, pointing at the respective targets.

The first set went off hours before Mr Uribe's inauguration, hitting the military academy and several houses around it, injuring a dozen people. But that was just the appetiser.

Just as hard-line Mr Uribe, elected on the back of his promise to crack down on rebels, stepped up to make his inaugural address, the second set of mortars went off.

The guerrillas fired the mortars using a sophisticated radio-activated detonation system. Luckily for the security forces and civilians in the firing line, only four of the 16 tubes fired.

But still 20 people, all civilians, were killed and over 60 wounded, with two of the mortar rounds hitting the presidential palace.

'Classic IRA tactic'

"It seems to be a classic IRA operation," said the former British army major. "The first set of rounds was designed to distract the security forces, focus their attention far from the principal target."

The main target was the presidential palace and the use of the remote-control detonation had never been seen in Colombia, but was commonplace in Northern Ireland and in IRA attacks on the British mainland.

"The FARC operation reminds me of the IRA mortaring of Downing Street in 1991," said the British bomb disposal expert. "Whilst the detonation was different, the idea was very much the same."

The Colombian security forces have been left looking like fools, especially when they had boasted that their operation to protect the historic centre during the inauguration was unprecedented, with 20,000 extra troops and police being deployed.

Even the United States had got involved, sending spy planes over the city to enforce a no-fly zone during the swearing-in ceremony.

But more unprecedented than the security force operation were the apparent IRA tactics employed by the FARC.

"There weren't precedents for this in Colombia," said police general Hector Castro, responsible for security in the capital. "Nobody imagined this would occur."

'Technological leap'

Jairo Parra, an explosives expert with the DAS, Colombia's version of the FBI, agreed.

He said it was not just the tactics and detonation that were new, but the quality of the homemade mortars, which represented a "technological leap" for the FARC.

The rebels have long used primitive mortars made out of canisters used for cooking gas, but they are notoriously inaccurate and have a very limited range.

But the mortars employed in the latest attack displayed outstanding production skills.

The security forces likened the 7 August attack on the presidential palace to the 11 September attack on the US.

"This type of attack was very difficult to prevent, because we didn't realise that it was within the capacity of the Colombian terrorists to do it," said General Castro.

"It's like what happened to the twin towers in the United States. You knew that an attack was possible, but the method of the terrorists was never discovered."