SATELLITE pictures have shown the location of a rebel camp deep in the Venezuelan jungle believed to be a hideout used by three IRA fugitives, writes Martin Arostegui.

The photographs show an enclosure in a clearing in the Perija mountain range, close to the border with Colombia. The camp is believed to belong to Colombian guerrillas of the left-wing Farc movement.

James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley jumped bail in Colombia last year. They were sentenced to 17 years’ jail in their absence for training Farc in IRA mortar techniques.

The co-ordinates of the camp the men have used — 10 degrees, 29 minutes, 56 seconds north, by 72 degrees, 44 minutes, 56 seconds west — were disclosed by Colombian intelligence to members of a Northern Ireland victims’ group. The camp in the picture, taken last year before the IRA men’s visit, coincides with these co-ordinates.

Venezuelan asylum for Colombian insurgents is a highly sensitive issue. The countries clashed in January when the Colombian government paid Venezuelan bounty hunters to seize a Farc leader in Caracas and bundled him across the border to face terrorism charges.

Relations have since improved and two weeks ago the Venezuelan authorities arrested three Farc suspects and have recently sealed off some roads in Tachira, the province in which the IRA men’s hideout is located.

This weekend Ernesto Amezquita Camacho, a lawyer who defended the men at the time of their capture in 2001, claimed: “I thought they had returned to their families.”

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