U.S. Holds Up Aid to Colombia After Army Implicated in 34 Killings

Just when the United States had decided to resume military aid to Colombia after a two-decade hiatus, the armed forces here have been implicated in brutal killings linked to illegal private armies.

Some of the killings appear to have involved narcotics police, who previously had been thought untainted by the rest of the armed forces’ dismal human rights record.

While the slayings are being investigated, $10 million--the first installment of a new U.S. aid program--is being held up by Congress.

“The decision whether to cut off military aid in full or in part will be made after it is determined whether the Colombian government is fully prosecuting” suspects in the killings, a Clinton administration official said.

Attention has focused on two mass killings of 34 people. The army general who had jurisdiction over the area where they occurred has been transferred, but there is no indication that he is being prosecuted.

The armed forces have a separate justice system, which U.S. officials have often criticized.

The killings occurred in July and October in the remote jungle province of Guaviare in southern Colombia. The U.S. interest in them has only recently come to light.

The crimes are the clearest indication that illegal private armies, which are funded by ranchers and control large parts of northern Colombia, have begun to operate in the south. This would create a serious stumbling block for the U.S. strategy of offering aid to the army only in areas where the private armies have no presence, thus avoiding funding units tied to the illegal groups.

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Collusion between the armed forces and the private armies has been denounced by human rights groups and the U.S. State Department.

Gen. Jose Manuel Bonett, commander of Colombia’s armed forces, has repeatedly denied that the army as an institution cooperates with illegal organizations, although he has acknowledged that informal collaboration may occur in “some isolated case.”

That has not reassured U.S. officials.

“We are extremely concerned about this suggestion of tacit, if not active, support of [private army] atrocities by the army,” Barbara Larkin, U.S. assistant secretary of legislative affairs, wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

That concern has increased with the second attack in Guaviare, which only recently came to light.

At least four people were killed in Miraflores by six private army mercenaries Oct. 18, residents said. Miraflores is a guerrilla-controlled production center for coca leaves, which are used to make cocaine.

Forces from both the army and the anti-narcotics police are based next to the town’s tiny dirt airstrip.

The mercenaries were taken directly to the military base when they arrived, residents said. They moved freely about the town, communicating with walkie-talkies, even after the killings, according to witnesses.

Three of the executions occurred in broad daylight, 100 yards from the military base, resident Hector Guavita said.

According to residents, neither the military nor the police acted to stop the killings.

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Capt. Edison Pareda, who now commands the army base in Miraflores, denied any knowledge of the attack. Common criminals or guerrillas probably committed the killings, he said.

The other set of killings occurred in July in the town of Mapiripana. More than 100 men flew into a nearby military-controlled airstrip that also houses U.S. pilots and advisors to Colombia’s drug-fumigation program, according to an investigation by local human rights groups.

The men rode speedboats up the river to Mapiripana, where they tortured and killed at least 30 people whom they accused of collaboration with rebels, investigators said. For five days, the death squad set up shop in the slaughterhouse, throwing parts of the victims’ bodies into the river, investigators said.