Pubdate: Thu, 09 Mar 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
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Author: Serge F. Kovaleski, Washington Post Foreign Service
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n262/a03.html

COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS STORM JAIL, FREEING 92

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 8 - Marxist guerrillas firing homemade missiles
heavily damaged a town in southwest Colombia and freed 92 inmates from a
prison there in the largest jailbreak carried out by rebel forces in almost
two years, authorities reported today.

Officials said that at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, several hundred fighters
belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
country's largest insurgent group, stormed the town of El Bordo, 250 miles
southwest of Bogota, to liberate guerrillas recently captured in Colombia's
deepening 37-year-old civil conflict.

No one was reported killed or injured during the six-hour onslaught, in
which rebels launched a barrage of projectiles made of gas cylinders packed
with explosives, hurled grenades and strafed buildings with gunfire as they
battled about 40 police officers trying to defend the community of 5,000
residents.

In the end, El Bordo prison director Luis Eduardo Ledesma told Caracol
radio this morning, the attacking FARC troops burst into the prison and
ordered the guards to disarm and leave. "The guerrillas released 92
prisoners, who then fled. The rebels opened the doors but did not destroy
the prison," Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez told reporters here in the
capital.

As the rebels made off with an undetermined number of freed insurgents, El
Bordo lay badly damaged with two dozen buildings, including the police
station, reduced to rubble. Aside from the prison, one of the few
structures left standing was the Roman Catholic church, where windows were
shattered by shrapnel while dozens of worshipers trapped inside huddled in
corners and under pews.

"The town was basically destroyed. It has been reduced to a pile of
smoldering embers," a Defense Ministry official said. "What is truly
alarming is that the FARC showed up with extremely powerful weapons that,
sophisticated or not, caused tremendous destruction."

The escalating nature of Colombia's civil war, in which 30,000 people have
been killed in the past decade, has become a major issue in Washington as
President Clinton seeks congressional approval of a $1.6 billion, two-year
assistance package that he says is needed to help stanch the flow of
cocaine and heroin into the United States from Colombia.

Some wary U.S. lawmakers fear that by providing more military training and
equipment to Colombia the United States may be dragged into the war. The
rebels finance much of their operations through the drug trade.

Other legislators worry about operational links between the Colombian army
and illegal right-wing paramilitary groups responsible for human-rights
violations.

Although the 15,000-member FARC and the government of President Andres
Pastrana are holding peace talks, the rebels have not agreed to a
cease-fire. Furthermore, the FARC is holding about 350 police and soldiers
in jungle camps whom they captured in the past two years. It has demanded
that the government release about 400 guerrillas in exchange for the
release of the security officers.

The government, however, has rejected any such arrangement. Consequently,
the rebels have launched intermittent attacks on prisons like the one in El
Bordo to liberate insurgents. In May 1998, in the largest jailbreak ever in
Colombia, FARC rebels stormed San Isidro Prison in Popayan, 230 miles
southwest of Bogota, and allowed all 324 inmates to flee, many of whom were
FARC fighters.
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