Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2006
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Section: Page A17
Copyright: 2006 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Joshua Goodman, Associated Press

COLOMBIAN ARMY ACCUSED IN MASSACRE OF DRUG POLICE

Prosecutor Alleges Soldiers Worked for Traffickers

JAMUNDI, Colombia -- About an hour before dusk, on a dirt road dotted 
with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks 
carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the 
gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid.

Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead. 
An informant who led the police squad to the scene promising they 
would find a large stash of cocaine was also found dead. When 
investigators removed his ski mask, they found a bullet hole in his 
head. In May, members of the Colombian prosecutor general's office 
visited the site in Jamundi, Colombia, where 10 undercover police and 
a civilian died in a firefight with a military patrol. "The army was 
doing the bidding of drug traffickers," Prosecutor General Mario Iguaran said.

The alleged killers were no typical outlaws. They were a platoon of 
28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven 
grenades from roadside ditches and from behind bushes, according to a 
ballistics investigator.

"You could hear the police shouting they had families and begging the 
soldiers not to shoot," said Arcesio Morales, 56, a patient at the 
psychiatric center who hid in a ditch during the 30-minute fusillade.

In the hours after the May 22 ambush, the head of the Colombian army 
stood by his men, calling the massacre a tragic case of friendly 
fire, with the soldiers likely having mistaken the armed police for 
leftist rebels known to operate in the area.

But the nation's chief criminal investigator quickly produced a more 
chilling motive. "This was not a mistake, it was a crime -- a 
deliberate, criminal decision," Mario Iguaran, the prosecutor 
general, said on June 1. "The army was doing the bidding of drug traffickers."

The same day, eight soldiers, including the colonel who commanded 
them, were arrested based largely on evidence obtained by agents of 
the federal prosecutor's office. With the investigation expanding, 
seven more soldiers were ordered to turn themselves in on Saturday. 
All are expected to face charges of aggravated homicide.

The allegation of a premeditated massacre follows findings by the 
United Nations and human rights groups that Colombia's military is 
behind a recent wave of disappearances and killings of unarmed 
civilians. Together, the charges have damaged the credibility of an 
army on which President Alvaro Uribe has leaned heavily in a 
remarkably successful effort to reduce rebel attacks and kidnappings 
for ransom. The ambush also drew a rare rebuke from Colombia's 
backers in the U.S. Congress, which has approved $4 billion in mostly 
military and anti-narcotics aid since 2000.

But despite public outrage over the killing of the squad, and to the 
dismay of senior police officials, Uribe has not reprimanded top 
military brass. That baffles many people, considering he has 
dismissed 11 army generals since taking office in 2002 for far lesser 
acts of negligence.

"What took place in Jamundi changes your thought process," Iguaran 
said in an interview. "Previously, I had the impression that the 
human rights abuses, if inevitable in every army throughout the 
world, weren't a real problem in Colombia. Now I have my doubts."

The scandal has revived allegations that troops were involved in a 
wave of killings of civilians who the army claimed were rebels killed 
in combat. Just this month, an army captain and three subordinates 
were arrested in Antioquia state on suspicion of masterminding the 
June 1 abduction of Saul Manco Jaramillo, a salesman who was snatched 
from a taxi while with his girlfriend. He has not been seen since.

In Washington, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) proposed cutting U.S. aid 
to Colombia's military and police next year by $30 million, a 
symbolic 5 percent. His proposal failed, although 174 congressmen supported it.

The vote coincided with the State Department's certification that the 
Colombian army is making progress in rooting out abuses within its 
ranks, despite a spotty record and a long history of abetting 
illegal, right-wing paramilitary groups.

Although the investigation into the police ambush is still 
proceeding, the army's explanation that it was a case of friendly 
fire didn't add up. Investigators agreed to discuss the case only on 
condition of anonymity to safeguard their security and because their 
probe is not complete. None of the information they talked about has 
been officially presented, and it was impossible to check independently.

The massacre took place in broad daylight, in a clearing where the 
green ball caps and vests of the police should have been easily 
visible. Investigators said that when police reinforcements arrived 
with lights flashing, they were driven back by gunfire.

Some of the victims were shot in the back and at a range of only a 
few yards, ballistic investigators said. Investigators said they also 
found evidence in text messages sent from the cellphone of Col. 
Bayron Carvajal, the highest-ranking soldier arrested in the case.

Although in Cali at the time of the attack, Carvajal was in close 
contact with his troops, ordering his sergeant in one message sent 
the day before to "pull back the ambush. . . . Everything is set for 
tomorrow," the investigators said.

The next day, they said, as the police raid was being prepared, the 
colonel sent another message suggesting he knew about the informant: 
"Prepare for the group arriving with the chicken."

A senior law enforcement official, also speaking anonymously, 
suggested the soldiers might have been providing cover for a meeting 
of high-level members of the North Valley drug cartel, currently 
Colombia's top cocaine traders. One possible attendee whose name has 
been floated by news media is Diego Montoya, who is on the FBI's list 
of 10 most wanted fugitives.

Gen. Oscar Naranjo, commander of the slain policemen and one of 
Washington's most trusted allies in the war on drugs, refused to 
speculate on the soldiers' motives. But he said his officers were an 
obvious target because of their nearly unmatched record of hundreds 
of drug arrests, many of them high-level drug bosses who have been 
extradited to the United States.

"This is a unit whose training we've invested years in," said 
Naranjo, who led the campaign that dismantled the Cali drug cartel in 
the 1990s. "It's a group that frequently must take lie detector tests 
and whose members have even been called upon to testify against other police."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman