Arrest
The three came to prominence on 11 August 2001, when they were arrested travelling on false passports at Bogotá International Airport while waiting to transfer to international flights out of the country. The Colombian authorities alleged at the time that they were training FARC rebels and were members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). According to General Fernando Tapias the Colombian authorities were tipped off by "an international security organisation".
Two of the three men, Monaghan and McCauley, had arrived in Colombia on 30 June 2001 on a flight from Belfast, via Paris. Niall Connolly had flown from Dublin, via Madrid, and spent a day in Caracas before making a rendezvous in Bogotá. The three men then spent the next five weeks travelling through a demilitarized southern zone of Colombia, then under the control of the FARC rebels as part of peace talks with the Colombian government. They were arrested as soon as they touched down in Bogotá on a commercial flight on the Saturday night.
Read more about this topic: Colombia Three
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“One does not arrest Voltaire.”
—Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970)
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)