MILITARY'S ROLE IN MASSACRE STUNS COLOMBIANS, LEADER

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 Velez just as he was savoring a crushing
re-election victory.

The killers allegedly 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 probably 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'
corpses. 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.

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.

"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.

Just 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 while
with his girlfriend. He hasn't been seen since.

In Washington, 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.

His proposal failed, although 174 members of Congress 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 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 caps and vests of the police should have been easily visible. A
conversation, let alone a loud plea for a cease-fire, 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 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.

The investigators agreed to discuss the case only on condition of
anonymity to safeguard their security and because their probe isn't
over. None of the information they talked about has been officially
presented, and it was impossible to check independently.

Investigators said they also found evidence in text messages sent
from the cell phone 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.