Colombian troops accused of deep links with militias

The Guardian (London)
Friday, 25 February 2000
By Martin Hodgson

BOGOTA - As the United States congress debates a massive increase in military aid to Colombia, a human rights report released yesterday alleges that the Colombian army maintains an intimate relationship with far-right paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

According to Human Rights Watch, in recent years the army has worked hand in hand with militias funded by drug cartels, sharing intelligence, coordinating joint operations and providing arms, medical attention and ammunition. Soldiers have also committed armed robbery, abduction and murder, it claims.

'Military support for paramilitary activity remains national in scope and includes areas where units receiving or scheduled to receive US military aid operate,' the study by the Washington-based group concludes.

The report coincides with a visit to Colombia by the White House's anti-drugs chief, Barry McCaffrey, a big supporter of a $ 1.6bn ( pounds 1bn) aid package designed to help Colombia combat the drugs trade and end a 36-year civil war.

Direct US aid to the Colombian army was suspended in 1994 in response to military involvement in torture and other human rights abuses, but 80% of the new proposed package is military aid.

Although US law forbids military aid to units involved in human rights abuses, observers say that the screening process is far from perfect.

'All international security assistance should be conditioned on explicit actions by the Colombian government to sever links at all levels between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups,'the report says.

President Andres Pastrana has stated his determination to stamp out corruption in the military, dismissing several high-ranking army officers. But a Human Rights Watch researcher, Robin Kirk, said: 'It's clear that this activity continues. While it's true that direct military involvement in human rights abuses has decreased, the military continues to contract out abuses to paramilitary groups.'

Wednesday's report, which is based on interviews with witnesses and government investigators, focuses on three of the Colombian army's most prestigious brigades, operating in the capital Bogota, and the cities of Medellin and Cali.

One witness, a former army intelligence officer who moonlighted as a cartel gunman, said that army officers set up a paramilitary group in Cali, south -west of Bogota, after leftwing rebels seized 140 worshippers from a Catholic church in May 1999. Between May and September the group is believed to have killed 40 people, and forced more than 2,000 from their homes.

The witness described the difference between drug traffickers, paramilitaries and the Colombian army as 'virtually non-existent'.

Few of those detailed in the report have come to trial in civil court and dozens of prosecutors have fled the country after receiving death threats.

Colombia's paramilitary militias were founded by drug dealers and landowners in the 1980s to combat extortion and kidnapping by leftwing guerrillas. Rebels and paramilitaries rarely fight each other directly, instead targeting civilians they accuse of sympathising with their enemies.

Last week 45 people were shot and hacked to death in a five-day killing spree by paramilitaries in the northern town of Ovejas.