COLOMBIAN MILITARY AIDING DEATH SQUADS, REPORT SAYS

MEDELLIN, Colombia - Military officers have continued to work directly with
right-wing death squads despite government efforts to purge the armed
forces of human rights violators, according to a report released Wednesday
by Human Rights Watch/Americas.

As recently as last year, three brigades led by officers considered to be
among Colombia's most capable commanders provided information and weapons
to private armies that carried out executions of civilians, the U.S.-based
group charged.

The report was made public as Congress debates a proposal for a
$1.3-billion anti-narcotics aid package for Colombia that would include
military hardware in a country plagued by a long-running civil war and a
massive drug trade.

"Far from moving decisively to sever ties to paramilitary groups ...
evidence strongly suggests that Colombia's military high command has yet to
take the necessary steps to accomplish this goal," the report concluded.

Referring to the three battalions investigated, the report warned: "If
Colombia's leaders cannot or will not halt these units' support for
paramilitary groups, the government's resolve to end human rights abuse in
units that receive U.S. security assistance must be seriously questioned."

Gen. Fernando Tapias, commander of the Colombian armed forces, said: "I
totally reject this attempt by Human Rights Watch to link the armed forces
with outlaw groups. This is simply an attempt to block anti-narcotics aid."

U.S. anti-drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, on a three-day visit to
Colombia, said he recognizes that the country has "a huge human rights
problem." But he noted: "The armed forces are making efforts to conform to
the rule of law. [Human rights] complaints against the armed forces have
gone downward to nearly zero."

Still, the report charged, abuses by paramilitary groups have skyrocketed,
often with the support of the army.

Specifically, the report--based on information from the Colombian attorney
general's office and independent informants--concluded that an army brigade
posted in the city of Cali helped create a paramilitary organization
financed by drug traffickers as recently as last year. And paramilitary
groups near Medellin turned bodies of their victims over to military
commanders who dressed them in uniforms and claimed them as combat
casualties, the report charged.

Brig. Gen. Jaime Ernesto Canal Alban, the army commander in Cali, labeled
the report libelous. His 3rd Brigade is accused of organizing a
paramilitary group called the Calima Front after members of the National
Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's second-largest leftist guerrilla group,
kidnapped 140 worshipers from a church in an upper-class Cali neighborhood
in May.

The brigade provided the paramilitary group with weapons and information,
according to information developed by the Colombian attorney general's
office and currently under seal, according to the report.

"The Calima Front and the 3rd Brigade are the same thing," one investigator
told Human Rights Watch.

"Together, evidence collected so far by Human Rights Watch links half of
Colombia's 18 brigade-level army units [excluding military schools] to
paramilitary activity," the report stated. "Military support for
paramilitary activity remains national in scope and includes areas where
units receiving or scheduled to receive U.S. military aid operate."

The Guardian

Colombian troops accused of deep links with militias

Martin Hodgson in Bogota Friday February 25, 2000

As the United States congress debates a massive increase in military aid to
Colombia, a human rights report released yesterday alleges that the
Colombian army maintains an intimate relationship with far-right
paramilitaries and drug traffickers. According to Human Rights Watch, in
recent years the army has worked hand in hand with militias funded by drug
cartels, sharing intelligence, coordinating joint operations and providing
arms, medical attention and ammunition. Soldiers have also committed armed
robbery, abduction and murder, it claims.

"Military support for paramilitary activity remains national in scope and
includes areas where units receiving or scheduled to receive US military
aid operate," the study by the Washington-based group concludes.

The report coincides with a visit to Colombia by the White House's
anti-drugs chief, Barry McCaffrey, a big supporter of a $1.6bn (A31bn) aid
package designed to help Colombia combat the drugs trade and end a 36-year
civil war.

Direct US aid to the Colombian army was suspended in 1994 in response to
military involvement in torture and other human rights abuses, but 80% of
the new proposed package is military aid.

Although US law forbids military aid to units involved in human rights
abuses, observers say that the screening process is far from perfect.

"All international security assistance should be conditioned on explicit
actions by the Colombian government to sever links at all levels between
the Colombian military and paramilitary groups,"the report says.

President Andres Pastrana has stated his determination to stamp out
corruption in the military, dismissing several high-ranking army officers.
But a Human Rights Watch researcher, Robin Kirk, said: "It's clear that
this activity continues. While it's true that direct military involvement
in human rights abuses has decreased, the military continues to contract
out abuses to paramilitary groups."

Wednesday's report, which is based on interviews with witnesses and
government investigators, focuses on three of the Colombian army's most
prestigious brigades, operating in the capital Bogota, and the cities of
Medellin and Cali.

One witness, a former army intelligence officer who moonlighted as a cartel
gunman, said that army officers set up a paramilitary group in Cali,
south-west of Bogota, after leftwing rebels seized 140 worshippers from a
Catholic church in May 1999. Between May and September the group is
believed to have killed 40 people, and forced more than 2,000 from their
homes.

The witness described the difference between drug traffickers,
paramilitaries and the Colombian army as "virtually non-existent".

Few of those detailed in the report have come to trial in civil court and
dozens of prosecutors have fled the country after receiving death threats.

Colombia's paramilitary militias were founded by drug dealers and
landowners in the 1980s to combat extortion and kidnapping by leftwing
guerrillas. Rebels and paramilitaries rarely fight each other directly,
instead targeting civilians they accuse of sympathising with their enemies.

Last week 45 people were shot and hacked to death in a five-day killing
spree by paramilitaries in the northern town of Ovejas.