COLOMBIAN ARMY ACCUSED IN MASSACRE OF DRUG POLICE

Prosecutor Alleges Soldiers Worked for Traffickers

JAMUNDI, Colombia -- About an hour before dusk, 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.

Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead.
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 May, members of the Colombian prosecutor general's office
visited the site in Jamundi, Colombia, where 10 undercover police and
a civilian died in a firefight with a military patrol. "The army was
doing the bidding of drug traffickers," Prosecutor General Mario Iguaran said.

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

"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.

In the hours after the May 22 ambush, the head of the Colombian 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," Mario Iguaran, the prosecutor
general, said on 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 on Saturday.
All are expected to face charges of aggravated homicide.

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 President Alvaro 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
said in an interview. "Previously, I had the impression that the
human rights abuses, if inevitable in every army throughout the
world, weren't a real problem in Colombia. Now I have my doubts."

The scandal has revived allegations that troops were involved in a
wave of killings of civilians who the army claimed were rebels killed
in combat. Just this month, an army captain and three subordinates
were arrested in Antioquia state on suspicion of masterminding the
June 1 abduction of Saul Manco Jaramillo, a salesman who was snatched
from a taxi while with his girlfriend. He has not been seen since.

In Washington, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) proposed cutting U.S. aid
to Colombia's military and police next year by $30 million, a
symbolic 5 percent. 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.

Although the investigation into the police ambush is still
proceeding, the army's explanation that it was a case of friendly
fire didn't add up. Investigators agreed to discuss the case only on
condition of anonymity to safeguard their security and because their
probe is not complete. None of the information they talked about has
been officially presented, and it was impossible to check independently.

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. Investigators said that when police reinforcements arrived
with lights flashing, they were driven back by gunfire.

Some of the victims were shot in the back and at a range of only a
few yards, ballistic 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 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
of high-level members of the North Valley drug cartel, currently
Colombia's top cocaine traders. One possible attendee whose name has
been floated by news media is Diego Montoya, who is on the FBI's list
of 10 most wanted fugitives.

Gen. Oscar Naranjo, commander of the slain policemen and one of
Washington's most trusted allies in the war on drugs, refused to
speculate on the soldiers' motives. But he said his officers were an
obvious target because of their nearly unmatched record of hundreds
of drug arrests, many of them high-level drug bosses who have been
extradited to the United States.

"This is a unit whose training we've invested years in," said
Naranjo, who led the campaign that dismantled the Cali drug cartel in
the 1990s. "It's a group that frequently must take lie detector tests
and whose members have even been called upon to testify against other police."