A COLOMBIAN TOWN CAUGHT IN A CROSS-FIRE

The Bombing Of Santo Domingo Shows How Messy U.S. Involvement In The
Latin American Drug War Can Be.

SANTO DOMINGO, Colombia -- Death came to Santo Domingo as its people
celebrated life.

Villagers were planning a street fair that bright December morning,
but a battle had broken out between the Colombian army and leftist
rebels in the nearby jungle.

The villagers heard a military helicopter roar overhead. Seconds
later, an explosion ripped through this collection of wood huts on the
edge of Colombia's northeastern plain. Two children were cut down as
their grandmother made them breakfast. A father was eviscerated as his
sons watched. A nursing mother was nearly decapitated, her 3-month-old
baby still in her arms.

In all, 11 adults and seven children died in Santo Domingo on Dec. 13,
1998.

On the surface, the attack seems to be another bit of homemade carnage
in Colombia's long, bloody guerrilla war, notable, perhaps, only for
the number of children who died.

But according to Colombian military court records, the U.S. government
helped initiate military operations around Santo Domingo that day, and
two private American companies helped plan and support them.

There is no evidence that the U.S. government or American companies
knew that their aid might lead to the destruction of a village. But
more than three years later, no one has been held accountable for the
deaths. Civilian prosecutors accuse a Colombian air force helicopter
crew of dropping a U.S.-made cluster bomb while supporting the troops
engaged in battle.The military claims that guerrillas accidentally
detonated a car bomb in the town.

The investigation is bogged down in jurisdictional disputes. U.S.
pledges to help have languished. But an examination by the Los Angeles
Times reveals an alarming picture of the Colombian conflict just as
the U.S. prepares to become more deeply involved.

According to a videotape admitted as evidence in a closed military
court tribunal, Colombian court documents and interviews with more
than three dozen military officers, witnesses and experts:

* The events leading to the battle outside Santo Domingo and the
explosion began when a U.S. government surveillance plane detected an
aircraft allegedly carrying weapons for the guerrillas. In doing so,
the plane may have violated rules that restrict American activities in
Colombia to counter-narcotic operations.

* Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, which runs an oil complex 30
miles north of Santo Domingo, provided crucial assistance to the
operation. It supplied, directly or through contractors, troop
transportation, planning facilities and fuel to Colombian military
aircraft, including the helicopter crew accused of dropping the bomb.

* AirScan Inc., a private U.S. company owned by former Air Force
commandos, helped plan and provided surveillance for the attack around
Santo Domingo using a high-tech monitoring plane. The U.S. Coast Guard
is investigating whether the plane was flown by a U.S. military pilot
on active duty. Company employees even suggested targets to the
Colombian helicopter crew that dropped the bomb.

* In a violation of U.S. guidelines, the U.S. military later provided
training to the pilot accused of dropping the bomb, even after a
Colombian prosecutor had charged him with aggravated homicide and
causing personal injury in the Santo Domingo operation.

AirScan officials deny involvement in the incident, saying their plane
was used only to survey Occidental's oil pipeline, and the company is
not accused of any illegal activity. Occidental officials say they
routinely supply nonlethal equipment for military operations in
northeastern Colombia but they could neither confirm nor deny their
role on the day of the explosion.

Regardless, the incident touches on many of the issues that make
Colombia's war so problematic for the United States.

Until now, U.S. involvement was supposed to be black and white: The
U.S. government provided military training and aid to wipe out the
vast fields of coca plants and poppy flowers that produce the majority
of illegal drugs on America's streets.

But leftist rebels have increasingly financed their war with drug
profits, meaning that operations against guerrillas and against
narcotics often blend seamlessly. And since the breakdown of
Colombia's peace process in February, rebels have unleashed a campaign
against the country's infrastructure, including the pipeline that
moves Occidental's oil, bringing private industry ever closer to the
war.

The Colombian military brigade that oversaw the operations around
Santo Domingo is in line to receive enhanced training and equipment as
part of the Bush administration's $98-million proposal to help protect
oil facilities in the region.

Events in Santo Domingo also reveal a contradiction in U.S. attitudes.
Even as Washington insists that Colombia vigorously pursue human
rights abuses, it has shown little interest in investigating the
possible role of American citizens.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) sponsored amendments to the last two U.S
aid packages to Colombia that require suspension of aid to any
military unit suspected of human rights violations, unless the
government is actively pursuing a case against the accused.

"Three years have passed, and we have yet to see anyone prosecuted for
the needless deaths of 18 people or the flagrant attempts by Colombian
military officers to cover up the crime," said Leahy, now the chairman
of the Foreign Operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

This is perhaps what is most important to the people of Santo Domingo.
While the war raged around them for years, the town's 200 people
mostly avoided the violence, until Dec. 13, 1998.

Now they are surrounded by it. Early this year, a resident who had
been a key witness against the Colombian military in the case was
assassinated by suspected right-wing paramilitary fighters.

"Nothing can fix what happened," said Margarita Tilano, a 44-year-old
grandmother whose daughter and two grandchildren died in the 1998
attack. "We want justice, nothing else."

The United States

On Dec. 7, 1998, according to military court records obtained by The
Times, Colombian army intelligence intercepted a scratchy radio
conversation between two commanders of the country's largest rebel
army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Colombian army officers have said that they interpreted the coded
conversation to mean that the FARC high command was sending a small
plane loaded with weapons to land near Santo Domingo. In return for
the weapons, the local rebel commander would hand over 1,000
kilograms, or 2,200 pounds, of cocaine that his men had recently
seized from drug traffickers.

What made the rebel operation particularly important to the Colombian
military was that German Briceno, a top local FARC commander, was
suspected of overseeing it.

Briceno, better known as Grannobles, is the brother of the FARC's
military commander and a vicious, if not adept, leader. Two months
after the Santo Domingo incident, he is believed to have ordered the
kidnapping and killing of three Americans who were working to protect
the rights of indigenous people.

The reported involvment of drugs allowed the Colombian military to
call for help from U.S. Customs P-3 Orion surveillance planes that
normally track clandestine drug flights.

On Dec. 12, at 2:45 p.m., according to court records, a P-3 packed
with high-tech monitoring equipment detected a Cessna 206 heading
toward Santo Domingo.

The Cessna landed north of the village. Men in civilian clothes
swarmed the plane and began unloading boxes.

Within five minutes, the plane was airborne again. The Colombian
military pounced. A company of soldiers from the 18th Brigade was sent
to pursue Grannobles on the ground, while the air force intercepted
the Cessna and forced it to land.

No drugs were found on the plane--not even after prosecutors performed
tests able to detect microscopic traces of cocaine. An internal
Colombian air force control tower log recorded the mission as an
attempt to block an "arms delivery"--there was no mention of narcotics.

Even though it is unclear whether drugs were ever part of the rebels'
operation, current and former U.S. Embassy officials said the United
States was right to aid the mission despite the restrictions limiting
U.S. aid to counter-narcotics operations.

The Cessna was flying from a known drug zone, they said, and they
believe that no drugs were loaded onto the Cessna because the pilot
realized he was being monitored.

The search for Grannobles on the ground fared even worse. Helicopters
transporting the 70 soldiers of Dragon Company took heavy fire as they
landed. Then, as the troops fought to cross a bridge about 700 yards
north of Santo Domingo, one soldier was killed and four were wounded.

"We heard [the commander] on the radio. He was desperate. He said,
'They're killing us,' " Lt. Guillermo Olaya, the air force liaison
with the army, said in military court testimony. "Hour after hour, the
combat grew more intense."

Oxy And AirScan

At 9 a.m. the next day, worried air force and army commanders gathered
in a tiny room to plan an operation to rescue Dragon Company,
according to military court testimony and interviews with pilots
involved in the operation.

The location of the meeting was Occidental Petroleum's Cano Limon oil
complex about 30 miles north of Santo Domingo. Occidental has long
been active in Colombia. In 1983, it discovered a billion-barrel oil
field. To develop the site, Occidental and a Spanish oil company with
a minority interest entered into a 50-50 partnership with Colombia's
state oil company, Ecopetrol.

But in discovering oil, Oxy walked into the middle of Colombia's
decades-old internal conflict with two guerrilla armies, the FARC and
a smaller group called the National Liberation Army.

Both made Oxy, its workers and the oil pipeline a target. There have
been more than 900 attacks against the pipeline since 1985.

To stop the attacks, Oxy decided to undertake the unusual mission of
bolstering a foreign military force by strengthening the
under-equipped and underfunded local army unit, the 18th Brigade,
current and former Oxy officials said. In effect, Oxy became the
unit's quartermaster.

Oxy or its contractors provided troop transport helicopters, fuel,
uniforms, cars and motorcycles. It even paid for leave tickets and
better rations to improve morale, according to the Oxy officials and
local military commanders.

The company also provided cash to the military, about $150,000 a year,
according to one rough estimate by a top Oxy official. Both the
in-kind and cash aid, a total of about $750,000 a year, was strictly
limited to logistical support. Oxy insisted that its help not be used
for arms.

But as a result, the army had more money available to combat the
leftist guerrillas throughout Arauca state, where Santo Domingo is
located, as well as improve security along the pipeline.

The 18th Brigade has been accused of abuses, including cooperation
with violent paramilitary groups in the kidnapping and murder of
suspected guerrilla sympathizers. The recent killing of Angel Riveros,
who was a key witness for the prosecutors in the Santo Domingo
attacks, is a case in point. Local human rights groups say the killers
passed through a military roadblock maintained by the 18th Brigade
before the Jan. 24 shooting.

"We've had serious problems with the military in Arauca in terms of
human rights and in the way the military deals with paramilitaries,"
said Robin Kirk, a Colombia expert for Human Rights Watch.

Oxy has given classes to military officers on human rights and
required its workers to sign contracts promising to respect
international norms. But it hasn't implemented other steps, such as
insisting on an independent review of the human rights record of the
military units they are supporting.

Oxy officials say they have little control over such matters. They say
relying on the military is better than having their own armed security
service.

"We have military protection because we must have it, because we have
no alternative," said Guimer Dominguez, the president of Oxy's
Colombia operations. "Unfortunately the armed forces are short in some
areas, and in this sense, we give them nonlethal support."

Part of this support, according to interviews and court testimony, was
"Room G" at Oxy's Cano Limon complex, where the military commanders
gathered on the morning of Dec. 13, 1998.

Tucked in a corner of the complex, the room was surrounded by sandbags
and equipped with TV monitors and computers. Room G, according to
those present, served as the planning center for the operation in
Santo Domingo, thanks, in part, to a second U.S. company, an obscure
and low-profile firm called AirScan.

Based in Rockledge, Fla., AirScan came to Colombia in 1997 as a
contractor for Oxy, according to Oxy officials. One of the Colombian
army's deficiencies was that it simply couldn't find the highly mobile
guerrillas. AirScan owned a fleet of small planes equipped with
high-tech monitoring devices, such as infrared cameras, that could
track guerrilla activity along the pipeline.

The company had a handful of contracts for aerial surveillance and
monitoring, some of them with U.S. Air Force bases such as Vandenberg
and Cape Canaveral.

The founders of AirScan, Walter Holloway and John W. Mansur, both have
backgrounds as air commandos, the Air Force version of Special Forces.
Mansur, 61, the company's chief executive, retired from the Air Force
in 1987 as a highly decorated colonel, having served as a military
assistant to the secretary of the Air Force and as the commander of
the Air Force's Eastern Space and Missile Center at Patrick Air Force
Base, near AirScan's headquarters.

Mansur impressed Oxy officials.

The AirScan pilots "were not gung ho jocks. They were very
professional," said a former Oxy official. "They were not mercenaries
in the classic sense."

The Switch-Over

The reconnaissance flights didn't stop the guerrillas, who recognized
that being spotted by AirScan didn't mean the army was on its way.
They actually began waving at the AirScan pilots.

Colombian military officials began pressuring Oxy to use AirScan to
conduct intelligence patrols far away from the pipeline, according to
former Oxy and State Department officials.

Toward the middle of 1997, about six months after Oxy's contract with
AirScan began, one top Oxy official approached the U.S. Embassy to ask
what sort of limits should be put on providing intelligence to the
Colombian military. The response was simple: Stick to the pipeline.

"I said, 'Look, you're getting into a dirty area, it's very
dangerous,' " one former State Department official recalled. " 'If you
do flights like mercenaries, then you'll be responsible.' "

To avoid trouble, Oxy officials say, they ended their direct
involvement with AirScan by transferring its contract. Instead of
Occidental, AirScan ended up having a contract with the Colombian air
force that was paid for by Ecopetrol, Oxy's Colombian partner in the
pipeline.

For its part, AirScan said it patrolled only the pipeline during the
time of the bombing in Santo Domingo, 30 miles away.

"The focus of AirScan activity was simply pipeline surveillance,"
Mansur wrote in a brief statement to The Times. "This was the only
activity in which AirScan crews or aircraft were engaged."

Pilots involved in operations around Santo Domingo disputed that
account, testifying that AirScan played a far larger role that day.

In interviews, pilots also said that AirScan flew missions all over
Arauca, which at 9,000 square miles is about the size of New
Hampshire. It frequently provided intelligence on guerrilla patrols
and helped pick out targets, they said, and even celebrated kills when
an air force pilot successfully blew up a guerrilla squad.

Neither Romero nor his co-pilot can recall seeing the bomb hit. The
pilots have been consistent with this account for three years.

The only problem: There is no stand of jungle 1,000 to 1,200 meters
north of Santo Domingo, and 200 meters west of the road where the
Cessna landed. There is only open field.

The Bomb

Santo Domingo is a nothing place, some three dozen wooden shacks hard
against a curve in a two-lane highway. There is no electricity. No
phones. No running water. Just big sky, open savanna and thick jungle.

Most of the people raise cattle or grow corn. Others have small
stores. The Colombian government has no permanent presence, so FARC
guerrillas move openly through town. Unlike other parts of Colombia,
drugs are not a big part of the economy, though coca is grown and
cocaine is produced in the region. The road where the Cessna touched
down is one of the primary clandestine landing strips.

Once a year, in December, when the crops are harvested and Christmas
is coming, the town holds a two-day street fair to raise money for
civic projects. In 1998, the aim was to put a concrete floor in the
two-room schoolhouse and add doors.

On Dec. 12, family and friends from hamlets throughout the region
began arriving to play in a soccer tournament, watch a beauty contest
and eat barbecue.

But in the afternoon, they began to hear gunfire, then explosions,
coming nearer. Aircraft flew overhead throughout the night, shooting
into the jungle.

Some people decided to stay, fearful they would be caught in the
cross-fire. Others left. Still others tried to leave but turned back
because of their own fear, or because soldiers stopped them, warning
that it was too dangerous.

The next morning, Dec. 13, the town's community leader and bus driver,
Wilson Garcia, then 44, decided to go to the nearest town that had a
phone, about 15 miles away, to call the Red Cross for help. Before he
left, he told townspeople to wave white rags to show the aircraft
above that they were civilians.

"Just stay calm," he said.

So people remained. There was Nancy Castillo, who'd given birth to a
baby girl just three months before. Salomon Neite, 58, a farmer who
was about to retire and hand over his land to his two sons. Luis
Martinez, 25, a soccer fanatic with a wife and child. Edilma Pacheco,
27, was working at the local store as a clerk. Giovanny Hernandez, 16,
had come from a nearby town for the fair.

When the aircraft appeared about 9:30 a.m., people followed Garcia's
advice. They began waving white rags above their heads. Some even lay
down on the pavement, hoping to better demonstrate their neutrality.

About 10 a.m., Garcia's daughter Alba, then 16, and many of her
friends were in the street near a broken-down red truck, a 1955
Chevrolet parked across from the town's drugstore.

They watched as a helicopter came into view, then turned to pass over
Santo Domingo from south to north. As it drew overhead, Alba looked up
and saw about four dark objects falling.

"Look," she said to a friend. "They're throwing rolls of paper at
us."

Then, darkness.

Santo Domingo had just been bombed.

A tape of the operation viewed by The Times--identified by those
involved as a tape made by AirScan--does not capture this moment. The
camera is focused on a field less than half a mile away where relief
troops were landing. But the survivors have vivid, slow-motion
memories of what happened.

The front of the red truck was smashed in by a direct hit, its right
front fender falling to the ground. Smoke filled the air. A woman
screamed, "They killed my children!" People began fleeing the town on
foot.

Alba woke to find herself bathed in blood, her arm nearly
severed.

Across the street, at the drugstore, Maria Panqueva was knocked flat
by a piece of steel that hit her leg. The woman standing next to her,
Nancy Castillo, was killed while nursing her 3-month-old, the top half
of her head nearly sliced off. The baby was found lying next to her,
screaming.

In a nearby house, Margarita Tilano was stunned by the noise. Then she
heard screams. Her daughter, Katherine Cardenas, 7, and granddaughter,
Edna Bello, 5, were dead. Her grandson, Jaime, 4, was wounded and
would die on the way to the hospital.

Down the street from the blast, Amalio Neite, 22, was blown six feet
from where he had been standing. He turned to see his brother holding
his father, Salomon, writhing on the ground, a hand over his stomach
to keep in his intestines.

Eighteen people died and more than 25 were wounded, some of them
crippled for life. Today, Alba cannot move her left arm. Its scars
resemble the crude stitching on a rag doll.

At the eastern edge of Santo Domingo, Olimpo Cardenas was about 150
yards away with his back to the explosion. When it occurred, he turned
around to see dead and wounded everywhere.

Cardenas jumped on a motorcycle and rode out of town to the home of a
friend who owned a Ford flatbed truck. The two men drove back slowly.
At 10:20 a.m. they pulled up in front of the drugstore, where many of
the dead and wounded had been taken.

They loaded up about seven of the victims.

As they left town, they saw another helicopter hovering above them.
About 200 meters away from town, they heard a burst of gunfire, and
saw earth and concrete flinging up next to them. Then the helicopter
flew off.

Cardenas, who had gotten out of the truck, stayed until he was sure
everyone had left town. Then he walked out on foot.

"I was the last one out," he said. "The place was a ghost
town."

The Investigation

The dead and wounded began arriving at hospitals in the afternoon.
Most told a similar story: At 10 a.m., a military helicopter had
dropped a bomb on Santo Domingo.

But separate investigations by the Colombian air force and army
concluded that the carnage was not the military's fault. They said
that guerrillas had installed a car bomb inside the red truck, the
epicenter of the damage. They said the plan was to lure Dragon Company
into Santo Domingo, then detonate the bomb. But after troops arrived
to reinforce Dragon Company and save the unit, the bomb went off by
mistake, killing the villagers.

The military said that conclusion was based on both testimony and
forensic proof--both of which were later called into question.

Fragments from the town tested positive for chemicals commonly found
in homemade explosive materials, according to court records. Two FARC
deserters who gave themselves up after the bombing blamed the incident
on their former comrades. Another witness, a local man who reported
seeing the FARC at work on the truck, recently recanted, saying a
military officer from the 18th Brigade had paid him to lie.

Air force officials also said a cluster bomb would have destroyed
structures or left large craters, a puzzling claim since AN-M41s have
a relatively small charge designed to kill people, not destroy buildings.

"I think, and it's only a suspicion . . . that the guerrillas put the
bomb there," Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco, the head of the Colombian air
force, said in an interview last year.

Olaya, the air force's local link to the army, refused to turn over
documents to civilian federal prosecutors when they arrived Dec. 17,
according to military court records.

Velasco continued to insist that no bombs had been used in the
operation, even after air force officials had sent notice to
headquarters about the use of the cluster bomb. Velasco later
explained that the air force classifies cluster bombs as low-power
explosives, not as bombs.

The military's insistence that the combat and the air force bombing
occurred far from town is also in question.

Using a satellite-guided measuring device accurate to within a few
meters, The Times traveled to Santo Domingo several times to measure
distances mentioned in the military's accounts of the incident.

The military has said in interviews and military court testimony that
the fighting began where the Cessna had landed, about 6 kilometers, or
a little more than 3.5 miles, from Santo Domingo.

If Romero's helicopter was at the height and speed he said it was, the
bomb would have traveled about 500 meters from where he launched it,
according to an analysis done by the Federation of American
Scientists, using testimony from the case. That means that if Romero
was heading in the direction of the town, something he denies, the
bombs easily could have landed in Santo Domingo.

If it was an error, some believe, the Colombian military is still
culpable.

"There's a pretty fine line between intent and tragic accident," said
David Stahl, a Chicago attorney who is on the advisory board of the
Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University. "I
think what happened is the Colombian armed forces put themselves in a
situation where a tragic accident was all but certain to happen."

There are still crucial details that could clear up the mystery. For
instance, the Huey pilots said they never flew over Santo Domingo.
Romero said the helicopter was north of the village and flying west.
The co-pilot said they dropped the bomb while heading northwest.

But the pattern of the impacts found by civilian investigators, and
the recollections of survivors, contradicts that testimony.

Survivors say the helicopter that passed over the village just before
the explosion was traveling from south to north. The analysis by the
American scientists indicates the helicopter that dropped the bomb
most likely passed over the town, and was probably headed either
northeast or southwest.

"The key discrepancy is the direction. You can't match [the pilots'
testimony about their direction] with the direction of the bomb," said
Michael Levi, a physicist who did the analysis.

The Americans who worked for AirScan might be able to resolve the
confusion. But two lawyers involved with the case said AirScan has
told the military court that the men no longer work for the company
and that it has no information on their whereabouts.

Oxy officials, meanwhile, said they have never investigated what role
the company and its facilities might have played. Nonetheless, they
rejected any ties to the disaster.

"We're truly sorry about what happened--though we don't know the
details--but in no way can we feel that we have any responsibility,"
Dominguez said.

Human rights advocates say the U.S. government is duty-bound to
conduct its own investigation into the role played by Orta and Denny.

So far, the U.S. has not done that. After being asked by the
procuraduria's office, embassy officials in Bogota checked their
records and found that one of the men had registered his U.S. home
address with the embassy during a stay in Colombia. They refused to
turn over that information to Colombian authorities.

Embassy officials said they are prevented by the Privacy Act from
releasing any information. But, they said, if they receive a request
from the prosecutor's office, which currently does not have
jurisdiction over the case, they might be able to help by working
through existing treaties.

At least one State Department official has expressed reluctance to
pursue the U.S. pilots. "Our job is to protect Americans, not
investigate Americans," one human rights group quoted the official as
saying.

Nor has the embassy made much progress with promises it has made to
have a copy of the tape its diplomats viewed independently analyzed.
In 1998, Kamman said the tape he had seen would be reviewed for
further analysis. Current Ambassador Anne W. Patterson made that same
promise in a letter to Leahy in July 2001.

Human rights groups find it strange that the United States, which has
urged Colombia for years to investigate possible human rights
violations, is not doing the same.

"If the U.S. government is serious about promoting human rights, we
think they have the legal duty to seriously investigate human rights
violations," Stahl said. "So far, we've been disappointed."

Northwestern's human rights center staged a mock trial of the Santo
Domingo incident in 2000. They found the Colombian government
responsible for the bombing.

Conclusion

For most of the three years since the bombing, the people of Santo
Domingo were seen as liars, leftist sympathizers or guerrillas. It was
only in recent years that some government officials came to believe
them.

The tape proved to be an asset for them. The times and events
recounted by the townspeople--who never saw the tape until recently
and could not have known what it contained--are consistent with what
the tape shows. The tape does show people with white material above
their heads or in white clothing wandering the streets during the
morning. The red truck does suffer damage between 9:45 and 10:10 a.m.
And people can be seen loading what appear to be bodies onto a truck
about 10:30 a.m.

To be sure, there are inconsistencies among the more than two dozen
witnesses. Some say the bomb that struck Santo Domingo left a trail of
smoke--an accurate description of the Skyfire rockets that other
helicopters were firing at the guerrillas.

The tape does not corroborate the account of machine-gun bursts from a
helicopter as the injured fled town in the flatbed truck. Though there
are small holes in the road where the people said the helicopter fired
at them, the video does not show the truck driver swerving, nor dirt
or concrete being kicked up.

In December, the town held a ceremony to commemorate the third
anniversary. There was a small parade, and one of the judges of the
informal tribunal at Northwestern University flew in from Chicago.
Victims and human rights workers gave speeches in the main square of
Tame, the biggest nearby town.

Some families have split over the stress of lost children, shattered
lives and the fight for recognition. Margarita Tilano and Olimpo
Cardenas separated, for example, and now live in different towns.

Nancy Castillo's husband left soon after her death, and her baby girl,
now 3, is being cared for by relatives. Alba Garcia lives with her
grandmother in a nearby town.

Most of those who remain in Santo Domingo dismiss the investigations.
A civil suit is inching along, filed by 24 of the families. The
average claim seeks damages of $5,000. The biggest is for $43,000.

"We want there to be justice, for sure," said Maria Panqueva, the
drugstore owner. "But we have lost the most beautiful thing we had:
the trust in what's right."

Still others are worried about the future. For three years now, the
people of Santo Domingo have challenged the Colombian military.

That sort of defiance may be enough to make them targets of Colombia's
violent paramilitary groups, which have recently moved into Arauca,
allegedly with the support of local military officers.

The groups are known for the massacres of civilians they accuse of
being rebel sympathizers. So far, Santo Domingo has not been touched.
But in the surrounding area, more than 60 people have been killed by
paramilitary fighters since August, allegedly including Riveros, the
witness, and a congressional representative.

Those who remain in Santo Domingo worry about what nightmares may
come.

"I have talked and talked and talked and talked. I have talked to
investigators, to the military, to the press, to human rights groups.
And I have told everyone the same thing," said Tilano, who lost a
child and two grandchildren in the bombing.

"If you want to do justice, do your work well," she said, "so there
will be no more massacres of children, so defenseless people won't be
killed, so they don't shoot at us anymore."