Colombia Judges Ask for Better Protection : Cocaine Barons Threaten to Kill 10 Jurists for Each Accused Drug Trafficker Extradited : from

Hundreds of judges demanded more protection from drug cartel assassins and the cocaine barons said Friday they would kill 10 jurists for every suspect extradited to the United States.

The White House said the Bush Administration was sending $65 million worth of helicopters, weapons and other equipment to help Colombia in its huge anti-drug offensive. Two more U.S. helicopters arrived in Colombia Friday.

Judges’ protests, combined with reports that the justice minister was fearful and might resign, appeared to make the courts a vulnerable flank in the battle launched here after the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan a week ago.

Thousands of students wearing black armbands paraded Friday through downtown Bogota to Galan’s tomb at the Metropolitan Cemetery.

Meanwhile, arsonists hired by traffickers set a country club outside Medellin on fire Friday, police reported, continuing attacks on Establishment targets that began with bombings and arson Thursday. They said the fire damaged two rooms.

2 Copters

A U.S. Air Force C-5 transport plane brought in two Bell 212 helicopters that were delivered to Colombian authorities. The White House said a $20 million aid shipment would arrive this week.

The copters, which bring to eight the number held by Colombian police, represent “an immediate, tangible response of the U.S. government to President (Virgilio) Barco’s stepped-up war on the narcotics traffic,” a U.S. Embassy press release said.

Anti-narcotics police of Bolivia and Ecuador received two helicopters each during the previous 24 hours, said diplomatic and government sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said it underscored U.S. determination to help Latin America fight drug traffickers.

Bolivia and Ecuador are two main sources of the cocaine processed in Colombia.

Brazil said it had tightened security on its Amazon border with Colombia to prevent narcotics dealers from crossing it. Federal police spokesman Paulo Marra said there was no evidence Colombian fugitives had entered the country.

Brazilian Justice Minister Saulo Ramos pledged his country would do everything possible to help Colombia in its war, saying the drug dealers “want to turn Colombia into an island of buccaneers, into a state without law.”

A Defense Ministry communique said Friday the army was continuing raids on the property of suspected traffickers and on suspected cocaine smuggling sites nationwide.

Drug Raid

It said two tons of the drug were seized in a raid Thursday on a clandestine airstrip, and that the seven-day offensive so far had netted six tons.

That brought the total for 1989 to an unprecedented 27 tons of cocaine--nine tons more than was confiscated in all of last year.

About 550 judges in Bogota and the surrounding province of Cundinamarca announced plans Friday to hand in their resignations to protest what they feel is insufficient security measures. In Cali, judges staged a two-hour strike.

Judge Omar Eduardo Garces Bueno of Cali told reporters he and other judges received threatening letters from the “Extraditables”--the name used by traffickers in their communiques.

In the letters, the drug dealers vowed to kill 10 judges for each suspected trafficker extradited.

Since 1981, 220 judges, magistrates and judicial employees have been killed in a campaign of terror aimed at intimidating the courts into dropping all prosecution of drug cases.

Since Aug. 16, when Bogota magistrate Carlos Valencia Garcia was gunned down, judges nationwide have been protesting for better security. They staged a strike that ended Wednesday, although 48 Bogota judges then refused to withdraw their letters of resignation. The Supreme Court rejected the 48 resignations on Thursday.

The country’s 32-year-old justice minister, Monica de Grieff, showed signs of growing fear for her personal safety.

“I wasn’t prepared to work in times of war, such as now,” de Grieff said in a television interview Friday. Bogota was rife with rumors that she was considering resigning, but her office refused comment.

Target for Traffickers

De Grieff is known to be a target for traffickers’ death threats. A predecessor, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, was assassinated by the drug cartels in 1984.

The day after Valencia’s assassination, gunmen believed to have been hired by traffickers killed the national police commander in Medellin, a trafficking center, and Galan at a political rally on Bogota’s outskirts.

The killings outraged Colombian society and the government responded with emergency decrees empowering the seizure of traffickers’ property and renewing the extradition of drug barons to the United States. The extradition treaty had been declared null by the Supreme Court in 1987.

The government has raided more than 700 sites nationwide and important drug suspects have been caught, although top cartel leaders have escaped.

U.S. and Colombian authorities are known to be working on the extradition to the United States of alleged drug money-launderer Eduardo Martinez Romero.

Israeli Denies Role

In another development, an Israeli reserve officer reportedly involved in training death squads for Colombian drug lords denied that Friday, saying he served as an instructor for a group of cattlemen fighting leftist guerrillas.

“I trained a group of farmers who defended themselves against terrorist organizations, mostly the group called M-19, a guerrilla group with the goal of turning Colombia into Cuba or Nicaragua,” Lt. Col. Yair Klein said on Israeli television.

Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel may revoke the passports of any Israeli mercenaries proved to be involved in the training of Colombian death squads.