COLOMBIANS' FAITH SHAKEN BY SOLDIERS KILLING DRUG POLICE

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 general 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 as the sun set on the slain officers'
still-warm corpses. With the investigation expanding, seven more
soldiers were ordered to turn themselves in yesterday. 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.

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 badly 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," Iguaran,
the chief federal prosecutor, said in an interview with The
Associated Press. "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.