Colombia Rebels Indicted in Deaths of 3 Americans

U.S. authorities, vowing to expand their hunt for terrorists to a global stage, indicted a notorious Colombian rebel group and six of its members Tuesday in the kidnapping and murder of three American human rights workers in 1999.

The indictment charges that leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, murdered the three Americans as part of a campaign of violence and mayhem directed against Americans who were suspected of aiding the U.S. military.

In fact, the three victims--including a young man from Oakland--were visiting a remote violence-torn region in northeastern Colombia to lend environmental and educational assistance to the U’wa Indian tribe. The murders of the workers outraged the United States and prompted it to cut off tentative peace talks with the FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel faction.

U.S. officials said none of the six FARC members implicated in the murders, including German Briceno, a rebel commander and the brother of FARC’s chief military strategist, are in custody. Nor is it clear whether Colombia would agree to extradite the rebels to the United States if any of them are ever captured.

Some analysts suggested that the U.S. indictment would have little more than symbolic impact, but Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said the charges send a strong signal about U.S. determination to capture terrorists around the world.

“Today’s indictment reminds us in no uncertain terms of where the path of terrorism ultimately leads--to lost lives and families decimated,” Ashcroft told reporters. “Today the United States strikes back at FARC’s reign of terror against the United States and its citizens. Just as we fight terrorism in the mountains of South Asia, we will fight terrorism in our own hemisphere.”

The indictment charges that the FARC and its leaders, branding U.S. citizens in Colombia as “military advisors” and “legitimate military targets,” abducted Ingrid Washinawatok, Laheenae Gay and Terence Freitas, who was from Oakland, as they left the U’wa territory on Feb. 25, 1999.

FARC leaders maintained radio communications with the abductors, instructing that the three Americans be kept in custody and that “those that don’t pay get their heads chopped off,” according to the indictment.

Days later, each activist was shot in the head multiple times, and the bodies were dumped across the river in Venezuela.

Michael Shifter, a Colombian expert who is vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, said that, as a practical matter, the chances were remote that the indicted rebels would be taken into custody from within the FARC’s strongholds.

More troubling, he said, is the impact that the indictment could have on efforts to achieve peace in war-torn Colombia by further inflaming the country’s fragile political discourse.

“Does it really move along any political solution in Colombia? Or does it just make the United States feel good to show its toughness against terrorists?” he said.

But Thomas Umberg, a senior drug-policy aide in the Clinton White House who worked extensively on Colombian issues, said the indictment “properly classifies these rebels as criminals. It’s important that the FARC and other terrorist organizations understand that when you target and kill American citizens, the U.S. is not going to sweep it under the rug.”

Colombia has already convicted Briceno, the FARC commander, in absentia and sentenced him to 40 years in prison in connection with the three murders.

Luiz Alberto Moreno Mejia, Colombian ambassador to the United States, acknowledged in an interview that “Colombia wants him for other charges. It would be hard for me to say” if officials in Bogota would agree to extradite him to the United States.