COLOMBIANS SAY ARMY IGNORED MASSACRE, FAILURE TO PROTECT TOWN

BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia - In late April and early May, a Colombian army
battalion stationed in this oil-refining town received two urgent
communiques from the country's leading intelligence agency warning that
right-wing paramilitary death squads might be preparing to launch a
massacre.

The dispatches stated that the attack might take place in a neighborhood
called the Twentieth of August, a hard-bitten community in northeast
Barrancabermeja that has been a stronghold of support for leftist rebels.

But despite the alerts, dozens of heavily armed paramilitary troops rolled
into town on the night of May 16 and unleashed a campaign of terror for
several hours without encountering resistance from a single soldier or
police officer. The masked gunmen killed seven people and kidnapped 25
others. In June, the assailants declared that they had killed all the
hostages and burned the bodies after determining that the captives had
links to the guerrillas.

Government investigators said nine soldiers from the New Granada Battalion
waved four vehicles carrying the paramilitary troops through an army
checkpoint before and after the attack and at least one soldier
participated in the killings.

The attack and subsequent killings highlight the reason the United States
is conditioning its support for the Colombian military on its willingness
to break its ties with the paramilitary forces, which have been operating
here for more than 30 years.

At a time when Colombia's two main guerrilla groups have dealt the armed
forces devastating defeats, the military -- which receives U.S. training
and aid ostensibly to fight drug trafficking -- has strengthened its ties
to paramilitary fronts to bolster its battle against the estimated 20,000
Marxist insurgents.

U.S. and Colombian military sources said the decision of the new president,
Andres Pastrana, Sunday to abruptly dismiss the high command and retire
other senior officers was an important step in weakening the ties between
the armed forces and paramilitary groups.

Pastrana moved quickly, in close collaboration with the United States,
because of suspicions that senior military leaders had ties to paramilitary
death squads and because of the army's string of defeats in recent months.

The new president took the unusual step of reaching beyond higher ranking
generals to name the new commanders of the army, navy and air force,
passing over senior officers and forcing several generals with known ties
to paramilitary organizations to retire. The records of those promoted were
reviewed by Colombian and U.S. intelligence to make sure they were not tied
to drug trafficking or human rights abuses, the officials said.

Several high-profile cases involving abuses by government security forces,
most of them in conjunction with paramilitary groups, have surfaced
recently.

Last month, the prosecutor general's office said two sergeants from the 4th
Army Division had been linked to massacre a year ago by paramilitary forces
in the eastern province of Meta in which about 30 people were killed.

Two weeks ago, then President Ernesto Samper apologized for five massacres
that were committed by state security forces from 1991 to 1993 in which 49
people died. And four months ago, the military dismantled the 20th
Intelligence Brigade, which prosecutors had implicated in several killings
of civilians and which had been accused by Washington of promoting death
squad activity.

In a series of interviews, about three dozen witnesses to May's attack in
Barrancabermeja, as well as victims' relatives, human rights workers and
local journalists, said that there were no signs of stepped-up security in
the weeks before the attack.

"No action of any sort was taken on the part of the army or the police" to
prevent the raid, said Regulo Madero, a human rights activist in the town,
which is in Santander province about 170 miles northeast of the capital,
Bogota.

"The public forces in effect stood there with their arms crossed as the
killings and kidnappings happened," said Jaime Pena, 57, whose son, 16, was
kidnapped. Pena said he sought help at a police post that night, but the
officers "would not do or say anything. They would not help look for him
and they did not ask for any information. I just got
nothing, nothing, nothing from them."

Army officials contended they knew that paramilitary troops were in various
neighborhoods around Barrancabermeja that night but were unable to react
because the principal army patrol in the area was attacked by guerrillas
and engaged in combat from about 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Battalion leaders also said they had stiffened security in and around the
Twentieth of August neighborhood by dispatching more patrols beginning
April 25, but that the paramilitary attack largely took place at a soccer
field in an area to the southeast called El Campin.

In an interview, Maj. Juan Carlos Barrera of the New Granada Battalion,
which has about 1,000 troops here, denied that the army played any role in
the attack or that any link exists between the military in Barrancabermeja
and the Self-Defense Force of Santander and Southern Cesar, which claimed
responsibility for the massacre. "We protect the entire population from all
groups, including the paramilitaries," Barrera said.

"Paramilitaries, guerrillas, they are all criminals and we have to combat
all of them," said Col. Joaquin Correa Lopez, who heads the police here,
which he said first learned of the incident early in the morning on May 17.
He denied that any relatives had requested help from the police on the
night of the attack.

One apparent contradiction in the military's account is the fact that,
according to many witnesses, the incursion began around 8 p.m. and lasted
roughly three hours, ending before leftist rebels attacked the army patrol.

Moreover, residents of the Twentieth of August refuted the army's assertion
that security had been strengthened before the attack. "That is complete
garbage. I did not see any soldiers in the streets that day," said Pedro
Gonzalez, 48, a food market owner. "There were no more patrols than usual."

Relations between various segments of the population and security forces
have long been tense here because Santander is the birthplace of the
country's two largest rebel groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).
Barrancabermeja also is home to Colombia's biggest labor union, which
represents oil workers.

Referring to the distrust many people here have toward the armed forces --
which are stationed in Barrancabermeja primarily to protect the sprawling
state-run oil refinery from rebels -- one human rights advocate said, "It
is a problem with the way . . . the military imagines things. They think
that everyone in these communities is a guerrilla or an enemy of the state,
but that is not the case."

Since the massacre, the town has been plastered with graffiti criticizing
the army and paramilitary groups. "The killers of the people sleep in the
military battalions" reads one slogan, while another declares, "The people
say it and they are right: The military and paramilitaries are the same
crap."

Staff writer Douglas Farah contributed to this report from Washington.

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)