Miami Herald: Thursday, May 21

Colombia to abolish unit tied to abuses, killings 
By TIM JOHNSON
Herald Staff Writer
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BOGOTA, Colombia -- Bowing to pressure from Washington, President 
Ernesto Samper said Wednesday that an army unit accused of harboring 
death squads will be abolished but said the move has nothing to do with 
human rights concerns. The [20th Intelligence] Brigade was not functioning 
well. It was not supporting command operations,'' Samper said. 

Interior Minister Alfonso Lopez Caballero acknowledged, however, that 
Colombia was feeling the heat over charges of army involvement in killings. 
``It seems to me that this eliminates a point of friction with the 
international commmunity,'' he said.

Since the mid-1980s, the 20th Brigade has served as the intelligence 
directorate for the entire 146,000-member armed forces, racking up 
numerous allegations that it has harassed political enemies, usually 
leftists, and even gunned them down. The State Department and 
international rights monitors cautiously praised the decision, which was 
revealed late Tuesday by armed forces chief Manuel Bonett. `It's a major 
step forward to have this unit disbanded because of its track record. It 
appears to be behind so many killings of human rights activists,'' said 
Coletta Youngers, of the Washington Office on Latin America.

Former Brigade members were indicted in the 1995 murder of former right-
wing presidential candidate Alvaro Gomez Hurtado. A motive for that killing 
was never established. Monitors believe the brigade may also be involved in 
the executions of a rights monitor in Medellin in February and two 
prominent leftists in Bogota in April. 

Current and former Brigade officers are accused of nurturing right-wing 
paramilitary groups that have been responsible for much of Colombia's 
recent bloodshed. ``Some wink and nod and maybe secretly encourage the 
paramilitaries,'' a senior State Department official told The Herald. ``In 
other areas, they are obviously ferrying them around in trucks and 
facilitating their travel.''

Dismay at the army's failure to fully investigate abuses within its own 
ranks led Washington to deny a U.S. visa for Gen. Ivan Ramirez, a former 
20th Brigade
commander, this month. As many as 13 top officers may be barred from the 
United States, according to news reports that the State Department official 
did not deny.

Samper, whose grip on the armed forces has seemed tenuous, said he asked 
military leaders 10 months ago to study dismantling the Brigade. ``Human 
rights violations have nothing to do with this. It was simply that the 
Brigade was not fulfilling its functions. It was centralized and there were 
serious failures of intelligence at the regional level,'' he said. He said 
intelligence functions would be restructured so that a single unit would not 
operate ``as a loose wheel'' within the Defense Ministry. 

Frustration over random killings has surged in Colombia. On Tuesday, 
hundreds of thousands of citizens honked their horns, waved white balloons 
and took part in other activities at noon to demand an end to bloodshed. 
Amnesty International Secretary General Pierre Sane sent Samper a letter 
noting "mounting horror and indignation'' at attacks on human rights 
workers. He said Samper's allegation that individual soldiers, but not the 
military as an institution, may be responsible for abuses is untenable. ``It is 
more than apparent that these attacks form part of a systematic, calculated 
campaign to eliminate perceived opponents by illegal means,'' Sane wrote.