Colombia Announces Probe Into Massacre

1.03.07

www.apnoticias.com

Just days ahead of a visit by President Bush, Colombia said it was investigating 69 soldiers accused in a massacre two years ago that induced Washington to suspend $70 million in military aid to the South American nation.

While U.S. lawmakers said the move was a sign that the case was making progress at long last, friends and relatives of the victims said the government was only trying to free up the frozen aid for its long-running fight against leftist rebels.

Authorities are looking into whether the soldiers — among them 11 officers and noncommissioned officers — were involved in killing eight civilians, including three children, in a banana-growing region of northwestern Colombia near the Panamanian border.

The February 2005 massacre was brutal even by the standards of Colombia’s conflict. Victims were hacked to death with machetes and chopped into pieces.

They belonged to an impoverished jungle settlement that has tried to isolate itself from the fighting by forbidding anyone armed to enter — rebel, paramilitary, soldiers or police.

Despite the ban, the self-styled “peace community” says at least 180 of its roughly 1,500 residents have been killed by parties to the war in the decade since the settlement was founded.

Villagers blame most of the killings on the army and far-right paramilitaries but say leftist rebels have carried out some attacks. No one has been convicted.

“We don’t have any faith in this investigation because it has been the Colombian state that has been attacking us and has shown no interest in stopping the attacks or investigating who is responsible,” community leader Jesus Emilio Tuberquia said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Bush plans to visit Colombia on March 11 to discuss continuing aid to Colombia, the largest recipient of U.S. help outside the Middle East with around $700 million a year.

Amnesty International praised the opening of the formal investigation, as did Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees aid to Colombia. The Democrat from Vermont called the killings one of the “most horrific atrocities of the Colombian conflict.”

“That members of the army have been called to testify is encouraging because it suggests that there is progress in the investigation,” he said in a statement.

But the opportune timing of the investigation was not lost on the people of San Jose de Apartado.

“The government is worried that it may lose its military aid if it doesn’t make a show of looking like it’s investigating,” Tuberquia said.

The bloodshed in the village is one reason why some $70 million in U.S. aid remains suspended to the Colombian military.

A letter signed by 59 members of Congress and sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March 2006 referred to the “deplorable” record of persecution of the peace community by the army’s 17th Brigade — the unit now accused by prosecutors of having committed the massacre.

“We believe that in the absence of any charges against those responsible, further violence against members of the peace community ensued,” the letter said.

The villagers blamed the army for the massacre because a witness saw some of the victims being taken away by soldiers. The authorities accused rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the leftist group known as FARC.

At first the army denied being in the area when the killings took place, something that was later proved untrue, as Leahy noted in his statement.

President Alvaro Uribe, who has boosted the size of the security forces to tackle Colombia’s insurgency, alleged villagers were FARC members.

“In this community of San Jose de Apartado there are good people, but there are some leaders, backers and defenders who have been named by people who have lived there as belonging to the FARC and who want to use the community to protect this terrorist organization,” Uribe said less than a month after the massacre while visiting the headquarters of the 17th Brigade.

The brigade had no comment.

Memories of the dead hang over the peace village as it prepares for its 10th anniversary in March.

“Here we’ve all been victims of this terror against us; there’s no one who hasn’t been touched by the violence,” said Tuberquia.

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