Colombian soldiers convicted in massacre
A Colombian army colonel and 14 soldiers were convicted Monday of killing members of an elite, U.S.-trained counter- narcotics police squad on the orders of drug traffickers, one of the most sordid of several recent cases of alleged corruption in the armed forces.
A judge in Cali found Col. Bayron Carvajal and the soldiers guilty of aggravated homicide in the slaughter of 10 police officers and an informant in a May 2006 ambush outside a rural nursing home near Cali. Sentences will be imposed in two weeks.
The massacre was just one of several scandals over the last two years that have tarnished this country’s armed forces and raised questions about the U.S.-sponsored program called Plan Colombia that in 2000 began funneling millions of dollars in aid here.
Since 2006, high-ranking military officers are alleged to have sold secrets to drug traffickers to help them elude capture, and to have planted fake bombs to gain career advancement. A recent report by human rights groups found that extrajudicial killings by the army have increased since the early years of Plan Colombia.
Carvajal maintained his innocence throughout the trial, saying he and his troops thought the police were drug traffickers. More than 100 witnesses were called to testify, some of whom linked Carvajal to both leftist guerrillas and drug gangs.
Defense attorneys said the legal process was tainted by public statements from the attorney general and President Alvaro Uribe that the soldiers had murdered the police.
The soldiers lay in wait, then fired hundreds of rounds and threw several grenades at the police unit as it was about to launch an operation to recover 220 pounds of cocaine that a tipster had said was stashed inside a psychiatric facility in the town of Jamundi.
Six police officers were found to have been shot at close range. None of the soldiers were wounded.
No drugs were found, and the informant -- who prosecutors said spoke by phone with Carvajal shortly before the attack -- was killed as well.
The preponderance of Plan Colombia aid, which in recent years has averaged more than $650 million a year, has gone to expand, equip and train Colombia’s military and national police. Congress was assured that human rights abuses and corruption in the Colombian armed forces would decline as a result of U.S. training.
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