A London-based agency that tackles organised crime is said to have contacted Colombian authorities as part of an investigation into an IRA bomb attack that claimed the lives of three RUC officers more than 40 years ago.
Details have emerged in court documents linked to the extradition of Martin McCauley, a member of the group known as the Colombia Three.
Last week a Dublin court ordered his return to the north after a probe by the Kenova investigation team and a subsequent decision to prosecute him for murder was taken by the Public Prosecution Service last April.
Mr McCauley, who lives in Co Kildare, is wanted in connection to an explosion that claimed the lives of RUC officers Sean Quinn, Allan McCloy and Paul Hamilton at Kinnego Embankment, near Lurgan, in October 1982.
The three police officers were travelling along a country road in an unmarked car when a 1,000lb bomb was detonated by remote control.
The Kinnego Embankment killings are being investigated by the Kenova investigation team under the heading Operation Turma.
The Kenova unit was set up in 2016 to examine the activities of British agent Stakeknife, who was west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci.
Operation Kenova submitted 28 prosecution reports relating to 35 individuals, to the Public Prosecution Service, but no action was taken in any.
Mr McCauley, a former Sinn Féin election worker, who has previously been supported by the party, believes British authorities are plotting to send him back to South America.
It is understood any attempt to extradite Mr McCauley from the north must be referred back to the High Court in Dublin.
In 2001 Mr McCauley was arrested along with Niall Connolly and James Monaghan in Colombia and accused of training FARC rebels for the IRA.
The trio were initially cleared of the charge, however, they were later convicted on appeal and sentenced to 17 years in jail.
They avoided a return to prison after fleeing Colombia, later making their way back to Ireland.
Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace granted an amnesty to the three in April 2020, however, this was revoked last May, a move that is now under appeal.
Court documents reveal that the British government’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has used the Kenova investigation to contact the Colombian authorities about Mr McCauley.
Although set up in Britain in 2013, the NCA’s powers were not extended to the north for another two years because of nationalist concerns over its accountability.
It currently shares a frontline role in tackling organised crime and is one of several agencies involved in the work of the Paramilitary Crime Task Force.
In an affidavit provided to the High Court in Dublin, Mr McCauley claims the NCA has contacted Colombian authorities.
He also reveals that his legal team has written to the Director of Public Prosecutions asking if the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), NCA, RUC/PSNI or any other “servants or agents of the state” have had contact with Colombian authorities that touches on Mr McCauley since 2001.
He goes on to say none of the information sought was provided.
“One point that I would respectfully ask the court to note is that if there had been a candid response to the above query, the court would have been learned that, for reasons unknown, the National Crime Agency has been in contact with the Colombian authorities under the auspices of Operation Turma,” Mr McCauley states.
Mr McCauley believes that enquiries have been made about legal matters relating to him in Colombia by Operation Turma.
“I further believe that the fact that those involved with Operation Turma are enquiring about legal affairs in relation to me in Colombia, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Operation Turma, is confirmation of this suspicion and that this is why they declined to answer the question that was posed,” he states.
In November 1982, Mr McCauley was injured in a suspected RUC shoot to kill operation during which his friend Michael Tighe (17) shot dead.
Police later claimed the teenagers were armed, however, Mr McCauley said he and his friend were unarmed and that no warning was shouted.
Mr McCauley was convicted of the possession of three rifles and given a two-year sentence suspended for three years in 1985.
It later emerged MI5 had planted a listening device inside the hayshed and that the killing of Mr Tighe had been recorded.
The existence of the recording was not made available at Mr McCauley’s trial and it is now known that both the RUC and MI5 destroyed copies.
In 2014 Mr McCauley’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
The following year then Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory asked the PSNI and the Police Ombudsman to investigate former RUC officers and MI5 personnel who were involved.
The PSNI then drafted in Police Scotland to carry out the investigation into MI5.
A former Police Scotland chief constable, Sir Iain Livingstone, is now in charge of the Kenova investigation team.
His predecessor Jon Boutcher is the current PSNI chief constable.
The Tighe shooting forms part of the ‘Stalker/Sampson series’ of state killings, carried out on unarmed republicans in the weeks after the three RUC officers were blown up at Kinnego Embankment.
They series of deaths are named after English police officers, John Stalker and Colin Sampson, who investigated the killings in the 1980s.
It is understood both the PSNI and Coroner Service in the north would not allow Mr McCauley’s legal team to provide extracts from the reports to the court in Dublin during recent extradition hearings.
Solicitor Fearghál Shiels, of Madden and Finucane, said his client believes the British plan to send him back to South America.
“Mr McCauley is impelled to the view that had he not pursued and won his appeal against his conviction for possessing firearms and exposed the egregious and disgraceful conduct of the RUC and Security Services that this prosecution would not have arisen,” he said.
“It is both ironic and concerning that Mr McCauley is the only person to be prosecuted arising from the Operation Kenova series of investigations which reportedly cost the public purse £40m and which was established initially to investigate alleged failures by the RUC to properly investigate as many as 18 murders in order to protect a high ranking double agent in the pay of the British Army.”
The NCA, Kenova and PPS were contacted.
