Colombia Three

On 16 December 2022, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace revoked the amnesty citing that the trio had not fully divulged the truth about their trip to Colombia in 2001.

According to Alex Maskey, he left Sinn Féin in 1989 or 1990,[7] In 1999, he joined an organisation called Coiste na n-Iarchimí, a Republican ex-prisoners group.

[6] Prior to his arrest, he was resident in Cuba, where the Cuban authorities claimed he was the Latin America representative for Sinn Féin.

[12] His brother is the journalist Frank Connolly, who was accused under Dáil privilege by Justice Minister Michael McDowell of travelling to Colombia using a false passport with Niall.

The Colombian authorities alleged at the time that they were training FARC rebels and were members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The three men then spent the next five weeks travelling through a demilitarised southern zone of Colombia, then under the control of the FARC rebels as part of peace talks with the Colombian government.

[19] The trial judge returned a verdict which found the three men guilty of travelling on false passports and they were given varying sentences of up to 44 months.

The appeal court overturned the original trial verdict, and convicted the men of training the rebels, sentencing them to seventeen years in jail on 16 December 2004.

[22] On 5 August 2005, following an interview with Monaghan by RTÉ's Charlie Bird, it emerged that the three men had clandestinely returned to Ireland.

A Colombian judge, member of Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), said that there was no evidence supporting that "the three had been part of a terrorist group.