Source: Washington Post Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Pubdate: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 Author: Serge F. Kovaleski, Douglas Farrah COLOMBIANS SAY ARMY IGNORED MASSACRE, FAILURE TO PROTECT TOWN BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia - In late April and early May, a Colombian army battalion stationed in this oil-refining town received two urgent communiques from the country's leading intelligence agency warning that right-wing paramilitary death squads might be preparing to launch a massacre. The dispatches stated that the attack might take place in a neighborhood called the Twentieth of August, a hard-bitten community in northeast Barrancabermeja that has been a stronghold of support for leftist rebels. But despite the alerts, dozens of heavily armed paramilitary troops rolled into town on the night of May 16 and unleashed a campaign of terror for several hours without encountering resistance from a single soldier or police officer. The masked gunmen killed seven people and kidnapped 25 others. In June, the assailants declared that they had killed all the hostages and burned the bodies after determining that the captives had links to the guerrillas. Government investigators said nine soldiers from the New Granada Battalion waved four vehicles carrying the paramilitary troops through an army checkpoint before and after the attack and at least one soldier participated in the killings. The attack and subsequent killings highlight the reason the United States is conditioning its support for the Colombian military on its willingness to break its ties with the paramilitary forces, which have been operating here for more than 30 years. At a time when Colombia's two main guerrilla groups have dealt the armed forces devastating defeats, the military -- which receives U.S. training and aid ostensibly to fight drug trafficking -- has strengthened its ties to paramilitary fronts to bolster its battle against the estimated 20,000 Marxist insurgents. U.S. and Colombian military sources said the decision of the new president, Andres Pastrana, Sunday to abruptly dismiss the high command and retire other senior officers was an important step in weakening the ties between the armed forces and paramilitary groups. Pastrana moved quickly, in close collaboration with the United States, because of suspicions that senior military leaders had ties to paramilitary death squads and because of the army's string of defeats in recent months. The new president took the unusual step of reaching beyond higher ranking generals to name the new commanders of the army, navy and air force, passing over senior officers and forcing several generals with known ties to paramilitary organizations to retire. The records of those promoted were reviewed by Colombian and U.S. intelligence to make sure they were not tied to drug trafficking or human rights abuses, the officials said. Several high-profile cases involving abuses by government security forces, most of them in conjunction with paramilitary groups, have surfaced recently. Last month, the prosecutor general's office said two sergeants from the 4th Army Division had been linked to massacre a year ago by paramilitary forces in the eastern province of Meta in which about 30 people were killed. Two weeks ago, then President Ernesto Samper apologized for five massacres that were committed by state security forces from 1991 to 1993 in which 49 people died. And four months ago, the military dismantled the 20th Intelligence Brigade, which prosecutors had implicated in several killings of civilians and which had been accused by Washington of promoting death squad activity. In a series of interviews, about three dozen witnesses to May's attack in Barrancabermeja, as well as victims' relatives, human rights workers and local journalists, said that there were no signs of stepped-up security in the weeks before the attack. "No action of any sort was taken on the part of the army or the police" to prevent the raid, said Regulo Madero, a human rights activist in the town, which is in Santander province about 170 miles northeast of the capital, Bogota. "The public forces in effect stood there with their arms crossed as the killings and kidnappings happened," said Jaime Pena, 57, whose son, 16, was kidnapped. Pena said he sought help at a police post that night, but the officers "would not do or say anything. They would not help look for him and they did not ask for any information. I just got nothing, nothing, nothing from them." Army officials contended they knew that paramilitary troops were in various neighborhoods around Barrancabermeja that night but were unable to react because the principal army patrol in the area was attacked by guerrillas and engaged in combat from about 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. Battalion leaders also said they had stiffened security in and around the Twentieth of August neighborhood by dispatching more patrols beginning April 25, but that the paramilitary attack largely took place at a soccer field in an area to the southeast called El Campin. In an interview, Maj. Juan Carlos Barrera of the New Granada Battalion, which has about 1,000 troops here, denied that the army played any role in the attack or that any link exists between the military in Barrancabermeja and the Self-Defense Force of Santander and Southern Cesar, which claimed responsibility for the massacre. "We protect the entire population from all groups, including the paramilitaries," Barrera said. "Paramilitaries, guerrillas, they are all criminals and we have to combat all of them," said Col. Joaquin Correa Lopez, who heads the police here, which he said first learned of the incident early in the morning on May 17. He denied that any relatives had requested help from the police on the night of the attack. One apparent contradiction in the military's account is the fact that, according to many witnesses, the incursion began around 8 p.m. and lasted roughly three hours, ending before leftist rebels attacked the army patrol. Moreover, residents of the Twentieth of August refuted the army's assertion that security had been strengthened before the attack. "That is complete garbage. I did not see any soldiers in the streets that day," said Pedro Gonzalez, 48, a food market owner. "There were no more patrols than usual." Relations between various segments of the population and security forces have long been tense here because Santander is the birthplace of the country's two largest rebel groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN). Barrancabermeja also is home to Colombia's biggest labor union, which represents oil workers. Referring to the distrust many people here have toward the armed forces -- which are stationed in Barrancabermeja primarily to protect the sprawling state-run oil refinery from rebels -- one human rights advocate said, "It is a problem with the way . . . the military imagines things. They think that everyone in these communities is a guerrilla or an enemy of the state, but that is not the case." Since the massacre, the town has been plastered with graffiti criticizing the army and paramilitary groups. "The killers of the people sleep in the military battalions" reads one slogan, while another declares, "The people say it and they are right: The military and paramilitaries are the same crap." Staff writer Douglas Farah contributed to this report from Washington. Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company - --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)