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I WAS looking forward to the new book by the head honcho of the Colombia Three, James Monaghan, which was published last week here and which advance publicity had promised would reveal all about the exploits of the Three Amigos down Colombia way a few years back.

On that score it was deeply disappointing, which probably only proves how gullible I am to expect anything else. In fact the book fails to provide any new or convincing answers to the two most interesting questions about the Three Amigos -- what they were really doing in Colombia in the first place, and how they were smuggled back to Ireland after they absconded from the Colombian justice system.

Colombia Jail Journal, written by Monaghan, costs *15, and I'm here to tell you there are better ways of spending your money. But at least there was an entertaining (and enlightening) dispute last week that accompanied the book's publication by Brandon Press (which also publishes Gerry Adams' books), a dust-up which saw Sinn Fein effectively gagging Monaghan.

Why did they do it? Well, Sinn Fein clearly would like to forget about the Colombia adventure altogether. They were also embarrassed by the strident anti-Americanism and revolutionary language in the book, which does not reflect where the party is at these days.

So they took the launch away from Brandon Press last week and organized it themselves at the party's offices in Dublin, presumably with the intention of controlling the publicity. For the same reason, it seems, they banned Monaghan from giving media interviews (and Sinn Fein are the guys who used to complain about censorship!)

But the efforts at burying the book backfired badly when Brandon protested because they were concerned about the principle of free speech and also about the effect on sales. And as a result of the dispute, now everyone here knows about the book.

The truth is, however, that the book is not worth all the fuss. In it, James "Mortar" Monaghan, once the most senior explosives expert in the IRA, sticks to the earlier explanation that the trio were in Colombia solely to observe the peace process there and were not providing munitions training to the FARC guerrillas. He doesn't even mention the initial "bird-watching" excuse.

Monaghan says in the book that members of the Coiste na nIarchimi (Sinn Fein's committee of ex-prisoners) had already traveled abroad before the Colombia trip to learn from peace processes in other countries.

"Niall (Connolly) and I had gone to Nicaragua; others had visited South Africa, Palestine and the Basque Country. There was a peace process going on in Colombia at the time and Niall, Martin (McCauley) and I decided to go there," he writes.

Because they regarded Colombia as a highly dangerous country they decided to take "extra precautions."

"We arranged to travel using other people's passports and were very discreet about our plans, because we had every reason to believe that we would be risking our lives if we fell into the hands of the Colombian army or their paramilitary allies. British and Irish intelligence forces ... would tip off the Colombians if they knew that we were going to Colombia," Monaghan writes.

No further detail is provided about how the false passports were sourced or how they traveled. The book says that on arrival in the FARC-controlled area in Colombia in August 2001 the trio spent days discussing comparisons between the Irish and Colombian situations with FARC members.

"They were intensely interested in our strategy of negotiation with the British," Monaghan writes, and in the idea of advancing towards "political power through elections."

When they were not involved in discussions, they "explored the roads and forest." Monaghan writes that he had a video camera and used it a lot, but that a few days before they were due to go home he had an accident which destroyed the film. It happened when they were "crossing a river by wading through it," he says.

The book does not give any detail about the FARC's multi-million dollar involvement in the cocaine trade, or the way they terrorize local people into supporting them. In fact the area controlled by the narco-terrorists is presented as a haven of peace and prosperity.

There is even less detail about how the three got back to Ireland after their release. "We had a long journey home, and needed the help of many good people," Monaghan coyly writes. "The story of that journey cannot be told for many years because that might endanger those people."

The trio had spent three years in jail in Colombia. There were found guilty of using false passports but not guilty on the more serious charge of training FARC rebels and were eventually released.

But this was appealed by the prosecution and the three were told to remain in Colombia until that case was heard. Instead, they absconded.

In their absence they were sentenced to 17 years in jail, in December 2004, for training FARC guerrillas. In August 2005 they arrived back in Ireland, but how they got here and entered the country remains a mystery.

Only a few pages at the beginning and end of the book are given to these aspects of the story. Almost all of the book is devoted to a description of the hardships and fear they suffered while in various jails in Colombia.

Most of Monaghan's criticism is reserved for the "imperialist" American forces and the influence of British "securocrats." Monaghan suggests in the book that American officials played a part in pushing his prosecution and that they had tried to frame him and his companions.

It is this aspect of the book and the revolutionary language in which it is written that appears to have prompted Sinn Fein's attempts to control publicity about the book last week. As part of the new administration in the North, Sinn Fein now has more nuanced relations with the U.S., and is also concerned about its substantial fundraising there.

Monaghan conveniently leaves out any detail about how he got his "Mortar" nickname in Ireland, and about how many people here were killed by the bombs he made. In fact he served 10 years in jail in Britain and Ireland on various IRA charges.

He got his nickname because he was the one who developed the home-made mortars which the IRA were using back in the 1970s and which they liked to fire from the back of trucks. Everyone remembers the attack on 10 Downing Street, but far worse was the price paid by the innocents in the North when the IRA's mortars used to go astray every now and then.

Monaghan is also credited with developing the remote control bombs used by the IRA which caused so much devastation and loss of life. But there's none of that in the book, just a brief mention of how he had been involved.

"I had fought in the long war as an IRA volunteer," he writes. And that's it.

Apart from dodging his past here, he also tries to deny that the change in FARC tactics from rural guerrilla warfare to using mortars and car bombs in urban areas -- a change which followed the visit by the Three Amigos to Colombia -- had anything to do with him or his companions.

Sounding like an unreconstructed student revolutionary from the 1960s, he says that's all an imperialist plot by the Americans to smear him.

Overall, Monaghan's account is unconvincing, because it ducks questions rather than answers them and blames everything on "imperialism." It's also extremely tedious, as jail journals tend to be, with endless accounts of being shifted from one prison to another and how conditions varied, and who the other inmates were, and how they spent their days, and the food and the beds and the guards ... and on and on for most of the 280 pages.

What eventually emerges is that the time the Three Amigos spent in various Colombian jails seems to have been far less uncomfortable than we have been led to believe. But, of course, that does not stop the whinging about the conditions.

At one point in the book Monaghan is moaning about how he can't watch a film on TV because the other guys in the cell block keep flicking through the channels. At another point he is giving out because someone won't turn the TV down during the day. Now there's real hardship for you!

And it also seems to have been less threatening than we were led to believe at the time. The book is full of the sketches and paintings Monaghan did while in jail, which hardly sounds like someone quaking in fear every second waiting to be assassinated.

Overall, reading between the lines, the regime in some of the prisons in Colombia seems much more free and humane and, because of segregation, a lot less threatening than the regime in some jails in the U.S.

What is most striking about the book, however, is the revolutionary posturing and the obsession with American "imperialism." It's like Monaghan went asleep in the 1960s and has only just woken up. He sees the world like some kind of Celtic Che Guevara.

Most of us -- including Sinn Fein -- have moved on.