LOST CASE FILES SPOTLIGHT ILLS IN COLOMBIA'S COURTS

BOGOTA, Colombia - Fourteen of Colombia's most notorious suspected
druglords were allowed to walk out of jail in January after prosecutors
conceded they had lost their case even before it had gone to trial.

At least, some say "lost." Others prefer the word "misplaced," while other
judicial officials simply say "stolen." What is undisputed is that
thousands of pages of evidence and documentation - the result of a two-year
investigation assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA
and the international police agency Interpol - have disappeared without a
trace.

Without it, judges said, there is no basis for continuing to detain the 14
defendants, all of whom are accused of being members of the Cali
cocaine-trafficking cartel. The evidence, prosecutors say, was enough to
prove that the 14 had set up laboratories, smuggling routes and
money-laundering networks to distribute tones of drugs across 21 countries
in Europe, Asia and the Americas during the mid-1990s.

A search is still on for the missing case files, and an investigation is
under way into how they disappeared. Almost all officials involved -
police, prosecutors, judges and Colombia's justice minister - agree that
the case demonstrates something is seriously wrong with a judicial system
that the Clinton administration hopes to establish as a central pillar in
its war on drugs.

"Episodes such as this one put a clear taint not only on the image of
judicial administration but also affect the international image of a
country dedicated to the war on drug trafficking," Justice Minister Romulo
Gonzalez Trujillo said in a written statement, calling the incident
"shameful."

The Clinton administration has proposed sending Colombia up to $88 million
in assistance for judicial reform over the next two years as part of a $1.6
billion counternarcotics aid package now pending before Congress. Colombian
President Andres Pastrana is seeking additional funding from Europe as part
of an overall $7.5 billion international aid package designed to end the
35-year-old civil war, halt drug trafficking and rampant crime, and end
Colombia's international pariah status.