MASSACRE STUNS COLOMBIA

JAMUNDI, Colombia -- On a dirt road dotted with country homes near
the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of
anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center
for a planned raid about an hour before dusk.

Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead in
a ferocious attack that stunned Colombians and severely embarrassed
President Alvaro Uribe just as he was savoring a crushing re-election victory.

That's because the alleged killers were no typical outlaws. The
gunmen firing from roadside ditches and from behind bushes were a
platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets
and seven grenades, according to a ballistics investigator.

An 11th man, an informant who led the police squad to the scene
promising they would find a large stash of cocaine, was also found
dead. When investigators removed his ski mask, they found a bullet
hole in his head.

In the hours after the May 22 ambush, the head of the army stood by
his men, calling the massacre a tragic case of friendly fire, with
the soldiers likely having mistaken the armed police for leftist
rebels known to operate in the area.

But the nation's chief criminal investigator quickly produced a more
chilling motive.

"This was not a mistake, it was a crime -- a deliberate, criminal
decision," Chief Federal Prosecutor Gen. Mario Iguaran told a shocked
nation June 1. "The army was doing the bidding of drug traffickers."

The same day, eight soldiers, including the colonel who commanded
them, were arrested, based largely on evidence obtained by agents of
the federal prosecutor's office. With the investigation expanding,
seven more soldiers were ordered to turn themselves in Saturday. All
will face charges of aggravated homicide.

"You could hear the police shouting they had families and begging the
soldiers not to shoot," said Arcesio Morales, 56, a patient at the
psychiatric center who hid in a ditch during the 30-minute fusillade.

U.N. findings

The allegation of a premeditated massacre follows findings by the
United Nations and human-rights groups that Colombia's military is
behind a recent wave of disappearances and killings of unarmed civilians.

Together, the charges have damaged the credibility of an army on
which Uribe has leaned heavily in a remarkably successful effort to
reduce rebel attacks and kidnappings for ransom. The ambush also drew
a rare rebuke from Colombia's backers in the U.S. Congress, which has
approved $4 billion in mostly military and anti-narcotics aid since 2000.

But despite public outrage over the killing of the squad, and to the
dismay of senior police officials, Uribe has not reprimanded top
military brass. That baffles many people, considering he has
dismissed 11 army generals since taking office in 2002 for far lesser
acts of negligence.

"What took place in Jamundi changes your thought process," said
Iguaran, the chief federal prosecutor. "Previously I had the
impression that the human-rights abuses, if inevitable in every army
throughout the world, wasn't a real problem in Colombia. Now I have my doubts."

The scandal has reinvigorated allegations that troops were involved
in a wave of killings of civilians who the army claimed were rebels
killed in combat.

This month an army captain and three subalterns were arrested in
Antioquia state on suspicion of masterminding the June 1 abduction of
salesman Saul Manco Jaramillo, who was snatched from a taxi. He
hasn't been seen since.

In Washington, D.C., Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., proposed cutting
U.S. aid to Colombia's military and police next year by $30 million,
a symbolic 5 percent. It is time "to send a powerful message to the
Colombian armed forces that we won't keep writing blank checks ...
that we're not a cheap date," he said.

His proposal failed, although 174 congressmen supported it. The vote
coincided with the State Department's certification that the
Colombian army is making progress in rooting out abuses within its
ranks, despite a spotty record and a long history of abetting
illegal, right-wing paramilitary groups.

Army's version

Although the investigation into the police ambush is still
proceeding, the army's version that it was a case of friendly fire
didn't add up.

The massacre took place in broad daylight, in a clearing where the
green ball caps and vests of the police should have been easily
visible. A conversation can be heard from more than 50 yards away in
the quiet rural area.

Investigators in the federal prosecutor's office in Cali also said
that when police reinforcements arrived they were driven back by gunfire.

Some of the victims were shot in the back and at a range of only a
few yards, ballistics investigators said.

Investigators said they also found evidence in text messages sent
from the cellphone of Col. Bayron Carvajal, the highest-ranking
soldier arrested in the case.

Although in Cali at the time of the attack, Carvajal was in close
contact with his troops, ordering his sergeant in one message sent
the day before to "pull back the ambush. ... everything is set for
tomorrow," the investigators said.

The next day, they said, as the police raid was being prepared, the
colonel sent another message suggesting that he knew about the
informant: "Prepare for the group arriving with the chicken."

A senior law-enforcement official, also speaking anonymously,
suggested the soldiers might have been providing cover for a meeting
between high-level members of the North Valley drug cartel,
Colombia's top cocaine traders.