COLOMBIA'S RIGHTIST 'DEATH SQUADS' FUEL DEBATE ON U.S. ANTI-DRUG AID

EL SALADO, Colombia - The armed men, more than 300 of them, marched into
this tiny village early on a Friday. They went straight to the basketball
court that doubles as the main square here, announced themselves as members
of Colombia's most feared paramilitary group and with a list of names began
summoning residents for judgment.

A table and chairs were seized from a house, and after the death squad
leader had made himself comfortable, the basketball court was turned into a
court of execution. The paramilitary troops ordered up liquor and music,
and then embarked on a calculated rampage of torture, rape and killing.

"To them, it was like a big party," said one of a dozen survivors who
described the scene in interviews earlier this month. "They drank and
danced and cheered as they butchered us like hogs."

By the time they left the following Sunday afternoon, they had killed at
least 36 people whom they accused of collaborating with the enemy, leftist
guerrillas who have long been a presence in the area. The victims ranged
from a six-year-old girl to an elderly woman. As music blared, some of the
victims were shot after being tortured; others were stabbed or beaten to
death, and several more were strangled.

Yet during the three days of killing, military and police units just a few
kilometers away made no effort to stop the slaughter. At one point the
paramilitaries had a helicopter flown in to rescue a fighter who had been
injured trying to drag some victims from their home.

Instead of fighting back, the armed forces set up a roadblock on the road
to the village shortly after the rampage began and prevented human rights
and relief groups from entering and rescuing residents.

While the Colombian military has opened three investigations into what
happened here and made some paramilitary arrests, top officials insist that
fighting was under way in the village between guerrillas and paramilitary
forces - not a series of executions. They also insist that the colonel in
charge of the region h as been persecuted by prosecutors and human rights
groups. Last month he was promoted to general, despite the fact that
examinations of the incidents are pending.

What happened in El Salado in February, at the moment when President Bill
Clinton was pushing an aid package to step up anti-drug efforts here,
strikes at the heart of the debate over the growing U.S. backing of the
Colombian military. For years the U.S. government and human rights groups
have had reservations about the Colombian military leadership, its human
rights record and its collaboration with paramilitary units.

The Colombian armed forces and police are the principal beneficiaries of a
$1.3 billion aid package that Mr. Clinton signed Thursday. The Colombian
government says it has been working hard to sever the remnants of ties
between the armed forces and the paramilitaries and has been training its
soldiers to observe international human rights conventions.

"The paramilitaries are some of the worst of the terrorists who profit from
drugs in Colombia, and in no way can anyone justify their human rights
violations," said General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar. But
he added that "the Colombian military is making dramatic improvements in
its human rights record," and noted that the aid package includes
"significant money, $46 million for human rights training and implementation."

But human rights groups, pointing to incidents like the massacre here, say
these links still exist and that mechanisms to monitor and punish
commanders and units have had limited success at best.

"El Salado was the worst recorded massacre yet this year," said Andrew
Miller, a Latin American specialist for Amnesty International USA, who
spent the past year as an observer near where this massacre occurred. "The
Colombian armed forces, specifically the marines, were at best criminally
negligent by not responding sooner to the attack. At worst, they were
knowledgeable and complicit. "

The paramilitary attack on El Salado indeed killed more people and lasted
longer than any other in Colombia so far this year. But in most other
respects it was an operation so typical of the 5,500-member rightist death
squad that goes by the name of the Peasant Self-Defense of Colombia, that
the Colombian press treated it as just another atrocity.