KILLING OF DRUG POLICE SHAKES COLOMBIANS

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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 told AP.

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.

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
current top cocaine traders.

One possible attendee whose name has been floated by news media is
cocaine kingpin Diego Montoya. Wanted for extradition to the United
States, he 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, refuses to
speculate on the soldiers' motives.

But he told AP that 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."