AUT: Fwd: Colombia. The worst...so far

[Sean Fenley <satellitecrash@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
> And the US government is prepared to send Billions
> in military aid to the
> Colombian military in spite of this...
>
>
> July 14, 2000
>
> Colombians Tell of Massacre, as Army Stood By
>
> By LARRY ROHTER
>
> EL SALADO, Colombia -- The armed men, more than 300
> of them, marched into
> this tiny village early on a Friday. They went
> straight to the basketball
> court that doubles as the main square, residents
> said, announced themselves
> as members of Colombia's most feared right-wing
> paramilitary group, and
> with a list of names began summoning residents for
> judgment.
>
> A table and chairs were taken from a house, and
> after the death squad
> leader had made himself comfortable, the basketball
> court was turned into a
> court of execution, villagers said. The paramilitary
> troops ordered liquor
> and music, and then embarked on a calculated rampage
> of torture, rape and
> killing.
>
> "To them, it was like a big party," said one of a
> dozen survivors who
> described the scene in interviews this month. "They
> drank and danced and
> cheered as they butchered us like hogs."
>
> By the time they left, late the following Sunday
> afternoon, they had killed
> at least 36 people whom they accused of
> collaborating with the enemy,
> left-wing guerrillas who have long been a presence
> in the area. The
> victims, for the most part, were men, but others
> ranged from a 6-year-old
> girl to an elderly woman. As music blared, some of
> the victims were shot
> after being tortured; others were stabbed or beaten
> to death, and several
> more were strangled.
>
> Yet during the three days of killing last February,
> military and police
> units just a few miles away made no effort to stop
> the slaughter, witnesses
> said. At one point, they said, the paramilitaries
> had a helicopter flown in
> to rescue a fighter who had been injured trying to
> drag some victims from
> their home.
>
> Instead of fighting back, the armed forces set up a
> roadblock on the way to
> the village shortly after the rampage began, and
> prevented human rights and
> relief groups from entering and rescuing residents.
>
> While the Colombian military has opened three
> investigations into what
> happened here and has made some arrests of
> paramilitaries, top military
> officials insist that fighting was under way in the
> village between
> guerrillas and paramilitary forces -- not a series
> of executions. They also
> insist that the colonel in charge of the region has
> been persecuted by
> government prosecutors and human rights groups. Last
> month he was promoted
> to general, even though examinations of the
> incidents are pending.
>
> What happened in El Salado last February -- at the
> same time that President
> Clinton was pushing an aid package to step up
> antidrug efforts here -- goes
> to the heart of the debate over the growing American
> backing of the
> Colombian military. For years the United States
> government and human rights
> groups have had reservations about the Colombian
> military leadership, its
> human rights record and its collaboration with
> paramilitary units.
>
> The Colombian Armed Forces and police are the
> principal beneficiaries of a
> new $1.3 billion aid package from Washington. The
> Colombian government says
> it has been working hard to sever the remnants of
> ties between the armed
> forces and the paramilitaries and has been training
> its soldiers to observe
> international human rights conventions even during
> combat.
>
> "The paramilitaries are some of the worst of the
> terrorists who profit from
> drugs in Colombia, and in no way can anyone justify
> their human rights
> violations," said Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White
> House drug policy
> director. But he said "the Colombian military is
> making dramatic
> improvements in its human rights record," and noted
> that the aid package
> includes "significant money, $46 million, for human
> rights training and
> implementation."
>
> But human rights groups, pointing to incidents like
> the massacre here, say
> these links still exist and that mechanisms to
> monitor and punish
> commanders and units have had limited success at
> best.
>
> "El Salado was the worst recorded massacre yet this
> year," said Andrew
> Miller, a Latin American specialist for Amnesty
> International USA, who
> spent the past year as an observer near here. "The
> Colombian Armed Forces,
> specifically the marines, were at best criminally
> negligent by not
> responding sooner to the attack. At worst, they were
> knowledgeable and
> complicit."
>
> The paramilitary attack on El Salado killed more
> people and lasted longer
> than any other in Colombia this year. But in most
> other respects it was an
> operation so typical of the 5,500-member right-wing
> death squad that goes
> by the name of the Peasant Self-Defense of Colombia
> that the Colombian
> press treated it as just another atrocity.
>
> The paramilitary groups were founded in the early
> 1980's, mostly funded by
> agricultural interests to protect them from
> extortion and kidnapping by the
> left-wing guerrillas. The paramilitary groups were
> declared illegal over a
> decade ago, but have continued to operate, often
> with clandestine military
> support and intelligence, and in recent years have
> become increasingly
> involved in drug trafficking.
>
> Over the past 18 months, more than 2,500 people,
> most of them unarmed
> peasants in rural areas like this village in
> northern Colombia, have died
> in more than 500 attacks by what the Colombian
> government calls "illegal
> armed groups" involved in the country's 35-year-old
> civil conflict. And
> according to the government, right-wing paramilitary
> groups are responsible
> for most of those killings.
>
> Since the El Salado massacre, nearly 3,000 residents
> of the area have fled
> to nearby towns, including El Carmen de Bolívar and
> Ovejas, as well as the
> provincial capital, Cartagena. Early this month,
> more than a dozen of the
> survivors were interviewed in the towns where they
> have taken refuge under
> the protection of human rights groups or the Roman
> Catholic Church.
>
> Despite efforts to protect them, however, some have
> recently been killed in
> individual attacks or have disappeared, actions for
> which the same
> paramilitary group that attacked their village has
> been blamed. As a
> result, all of the survivors interviewed for this
> story spoke on condition
> that their names not be used.
>
> Their accounts, however, coincide with
> investigations conducted by the
> Colombian government prosecutor's office and by the
> Colombia office of the
> United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
>
> Members of a paramilitary unit had attacked this
> village in 1997, killing
> five people and warning that they would eventually
> come back. Many
> residents fled then, but returned after a few months
> believing that they
> were safe until the death squad suddenly reappeared
> on the morning of Feb.
> 18.
>
> "I looked up at the hills, and could see armed men
> everywhere, blocking
> every possible exit," a farmer recalled. "They had
> surrounded the town, and
> almost as soon as they came down, they began firing
> their guns and
> shouting, 'Death to the guerrillas.' "
>
> The death squad troops, almost all dressed in
> military-style uniforms with
> a blue patch, made their way to the basketball court
> at the center of the
> village. They took tables and chairs from a nearby
> building, pulled out a
> list of names and began the search for victims.
>
> "Some people were shot, but a lot of them were
> beaten with clubs and then
> stabbed with knives or sliced up with machetes," one
> witness said. "A few
> people were beheaded, or strangled with metal wires,
> while others had their
> throats cut."
>
> The list of those to be executed was supplied by two
> men, one of whom was
> wearing a ski mask. Paramilitary leaders, who have
> acknowledged the attack
> on El Salado but describe it as combat with the
> Revolutionary Armed Forces
> of Colombia, known as the FARC, later said that the
> two men were FARC
> deserters who had dealt with local people and knew
> who had been guerrilla
> sympathizers.
>
> "It was all done very methodically," one witness
> said. "Some people were
> brought to the basketball court, but were saved
> because someone would say,
> 'Not that one,' and they would be allowed to leave.
> But I saw a woman
> neighbor of mine, who I know had nothing at all to
> do with the guerrillas,
> knocked down with clubs and then stabbed to death."
>
> While some paramilitaries searched for people to
> kill, others were breaking
> into shops and stealing beer, rum and whiskey.
> Before long, a macabre party
> atmosphere prevailed, with the paramilitaries
> setting up radios with dance
> music and ordering a local guitarist and
> accordionist to play.
>
> In addition, a young waitress from a cantina
> adjoining the basketball court
> was ordered to keep a steady supply of liquor
> flowing. As the armed men
> grew drunk and rowdy, they repeatedly raped her,
> along with several other
> women, according to residents and human rights
> groups.
>
> As night fell, some residents fled to the wooded
> hills above town. Others,
> however, stayed in their homes, afraid of being
> caught if they tried to
> escape, unable to move because they had small
> children, or convinced that
> they would not be harmed.
>
> Saturday was more of the same. "All day long we
> could hear occasional
> bursts of gunfire, along with the screams and cries
> of those who were being
> tortured and killed," said a woman who had taken
> refuge in the hills with
> her small children.
>
> Of the 36 people killed in town, 16 were executed at
> the basketball court.
> An additional 18 people were killed in the
> countryside, residents and human
> rights workers said, and 17 more are still missing,
> making for a death toll
> that could be as high as 71.
>
> By Friday afternoon, however, news of the slaughter
> had spread to El Carmen
> de Bolívar, about 15 miles away. Relatives of El
> Salado residents rushed to
> local police and military posts, but were rebuffed.
>
> "We made a scandal and nearly caused a riot, we were
> so insistent," said a
> 40-year-old-man who had left El Salado early on
> Friday because he had
> business in town. "But they did nothing to help us."
>
> Not only did the armed forces and the police not
> come to the aid of the
> villagers here, but the roadblock they set up
> prevented humanitarian aid
> from entering the village. Anyone seeking to enter
> the area was told the
> road was unsafe because it had been mined and that
> combat was going on
> between guerrilla and paramilitary units.
>
> In a telephone interview, three Colombian Navy
> admirals said that residents
> of El Salado were accusing the military of
> complicity in the massacre
> because they had been coerced by guerrillas." The
> roadblock was set up,
> they said, to prevent more deaths or injuries to
> civilians.
>
> "At no point was there collaboration on our part,
> nor would we have
> permitted their passage" through the area, Adm.
> William Porras, the second
> in command of the Colombian Navy, said of the death
> squad unit. "We never
> at any point were covering up for them or helping
> them, as all the
> subsequent investigations have shown."
>
> But local residents, Colombian prosecutors
> investigating the massacre and
> human rights groups say there was no combat.
> Villagers say that the armed
> forces had not been in the center of El Salado
> recently, and that they had
> left the outlying areas a day before. Residents also
> say they had passed
> over the dirt road that Friday morning and there
> were no mines.
>
> "The army was on patrol for two or three days before
> the massacre took
> place, and then suddenly they disappeared," recalled
> a 43-year-old tobacco
> farmer. "It can't be explained, and it seems very
> curious to me."
>
> What has been established is that the villagers were
> simple peasants, and
> not the guerrillas the paramilitary leader says his
> troops were fighting.
> "It is quite clear that these were defenseless
> people and that what they
> were subjected to was not combat, but abuse and
> torture," said a foreign
> diplomat who has been investigating.
>
> Residents said the paramilitaries felt so certain
> that government security
> forces would stay away that late on Friday they had
> a helicopter flown in.
> It landed in front of a church and picked up a death
> squad fighter who was
> injured when a family he was trying to drag out of
> their house to be taken
> to the basketball court resisted.
>
> In a report published last February, Human Rights
> Watch found "detailed,
> abundant and compelling evidence of continuing close
> ties between the
> Colombian Army and paramilitary groups responsible
> for gross human rights
> violations." All told, "half of Colombia's 18
> brigade-level units have
> documented links to paramilitary activity," the
> report concluded.
>
> "Far from moving decisively to sever ties to
> paramilitaries, Human Rights
> Watch's evidence strongly suggests that Colombia's
> military high command
> has yet to take the necessary steps to accomplish
> this goal," the report
> stated.
>
> At the time of the El Salado massacre, the senior
> military officer in this
> region was Col. Rodrigo Quiñones Cárdenas, commander
> of the First Navy
> Brigade, who has since been promoted to general. As
> director of Naval
> Intelligence in the early 1990's, he was identified
> by Colombian
> prosecutors as the organizer of a paramilitary
> network responsible for the
> killings of 57 trade unionists, human rights workers
> and members of a
> left-wing political party.
>
> In 1994, Colonel Quiñones and seven other soldiers
> were charged with
> "conspiring to form or collaborate with armed
> groups." But after the main
> witness against him was killed in a maximum security
> prison and the case
> was moved from a civilian court to a military
> tribunal, the colonel was
> acquitted.
>
> According to the same investigation by Colombian
> prosecutors, one of
> Colonel Quiñones's closest associates in that
> paramilitary network was
> Harold Mantilla, a colonel in the Colombian Marines.
>
> Today, Colonel Mantilla is commander of the Fifth
> Marine Battalion, which
> operates in the area around El Salado and is one of
> the units said by
> residents and human rights workers to have failed to
> respond to appeals for
> help.
>
> After the paramilitary unit left El Salado, the
> police captured 11
> paramilitaries northeast of here on the ranch of a
> drug trafficker who is
> in prison in Bogotá. Along with four others who were
> arrested separately,
> they are facing murder charges, but their leaders
> and most of the others
> who carried out the killings remain free.
>
> More than four months after the massacre, El Salado
> is virtually deserted.
> Only one of the town's 1,330 original residents was
> present when a reporter
> and human rights workers visited early this month,
> and he said the village
> remains as it was the day the death squad left,
> except for the two mass
> graves on a rise near the basketball court where the
> bodies were buried and
> later exhumed for investigators.
>
> The tables and chairs used by the paramilitary
> "judges," smashed or
> overturned as they left, are still strewn across the
> basketball court.
>
> "I don't know if the people are ever going to want
> to come back again," the
> resident said. "What happened here was just too
> terrible to bear, and we
> didn't deserve it."
>
>
>
> Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
> July 14, 2000
>
> Army Colonel Sentenced for Not Reporting Wife's
> Heroin Smuggling
>
> By ALAN FEUER
>
> After being chided by a federal judge for not
> apologizing for his crimes, a
> United States Army colonel who once ran the
> government's antidrug
> operations in Colombia was sentenced yesterday to
> five months in prison for
> never reporting that he knew his wife was smuggling
> heroin through
> diplomatic mail from Bogotá to New York City.
>
> The colonel, James C. Hiett, stood with his hands
> clasped tightly before
> him in Federal District Court in Brooklyn as Judge
> Edward R. Korman
> pronounced his sentence in a weary, troubled
> whisper.
>
> Moments before the sentence was handed down, Judge
> Korman asked the colonel
> if he had anything to say on his own behalf.
>
> His lips set and his chin held high, Colonel Hiett
> said that he did not.
>
> "How is it you have nothing to say?" Judge Korman
> then asked, slapping his
> hand on the desk in what seemed like inadvertent
> frustration.
>
> "I didn't think I could speak at this point to tell
> you what I really feel,
> sir," Colonel Hiett answered crisply, his jaw
> muscles quivering with
> restrained emotion.
>
> "The only thing that I did -- that I consciously did
> -- was try to protect
> my wife after the fact."
>
> Colonel Hiett admitted in April to paying his
> household bills with
> thousands of dollars he knew his wife had earned
> from shipping heroin from
> the United States Embassy in Bogotá to accomplices
> in Manhattan and Queens.
>
> His wife, Laurie Anne Hiett, pleaded guilty in
> January to drug trafficking
> charges and is serving a five-year prison term.
>
> The case of Colonel Hiett, who oversaw about 200
> American troops charged
> with training Colombian security forces in
> counternarcotics operations, has
> been an embarrassment for the Army, which cleared
> him of all involvement in
> the smuggling scheme last year after a three-month
> investigation.
>
> Despite the Army's findings, Judge Korman excoriated
> the colonel yesterday.
>
> "When someone in a position of trust engages in
> conduct like this, it
> undermines confidence in the military," Judge Korman
> said.
>
> "It undermines confidence in the country's drug
> program. And that's what
> abuse of trust is about."
>
> Colonel Hiett, 48, has already filed for his
> retirement, which is to take
> effect in November.
>
> Federal prosecutors have said that he could face a
> reduced pension, even
> court-martial.
>
> But Army officials did not return phone calls
> yesterday seeking comment on
> the colonel's case.
>
> In an emotional twist to the hearing yesterday,
> Judge Korman allowed the
> mother of an Army captain who died in a military
> plane crash last year
> while serving under Colonel Hiett's command to
> address the court before the
> sentence was issued.
>
> The mother, Janie Shafer, of Brunswick, Md., has
> accused Colonel Hiett of
> causing the death of her daughter, Capt. Jennifer
> Shafer Odom, by revealing
> secret information about military surveillance
> flights to Colombian drug
> traffickers.
>
> Although Judge Korman allowed Ms. Shafer to speak,
> he acknowledged that
> there was no evidence to support her allegations.
>
> Standing at the lectern with a photograph of her
> dead daughter pressed to
> her chest, Ms. Shafer begged Judge Korman to
> investigate the plane crash,
> which the Army has ruled an accident.
>
> Judge Korman said he had no power to investigate the
> crash, but he consoled
> Ms. Shafer with gentle words from the bench.
>
> "I'm looking at the picture of your daughter and I'm
> holding back tears
> myself," he said.
>
> "I can just imagine your suffering as a parent
> myself."
>
>
>
> Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
>
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