LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ASFADDES: Association of Relatives of Detainees and Missing Persons

AUC: United Self‑Defense Groups of Colombia

CCJ: Colombian Commission of Jurists

CINEP: Center for Research and Popular Education

CNP: Colombian National Police

CODHES: Advisory Office for Human Rights and Displacement

COEMM: Middle Magdalena Special Operative Command of the Colombian National Police

CREDHOS: Regional Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights

CTI: Technical Investigation Unit of the Office of the Attorney General

CUT: Trade Union Confederation

DAS: Administrative Department of Security

Defensoría del Pueblo: Public Advocate

EUM: End-Use Monitoring report

FARC-EP: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army

Fiscalía General de la Nación: Attorney General's Office

GRUDH-INSGE: Colombian National Police Human Rights Office

IACHR: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States

ICRC: International Committee of the Red Cross

INL: U.S. State Department Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs

INPEC: National Prison System Institute

MAS: Death to Kidnappers

MINGA: Association for the Promotion of Social Alternatives

OFP: Popular Women's Organization

ONDCP: White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

PBI:  Peace Brigades International

Procuraduría General de la Nación: the government's Internal Affairs agency

UNHCHR: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

UC-ELN: National Liberation Army-Camilist Union

UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund

USAID: U.S. Agency for International Development

          I. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Summary

The "Sixth Division" is a phrase used in Colombia to refer to paramilitary groups. Colombia's Army has five divisions, but many Colombians told Human Rights Watch that paramilitaries are so fully integrated into the army's battle strategy, coordinated with its soldiers in the field, and linked to government units via intelligence, supplies, radios, weapons, cash, and common purpose that they effectively constitute a sixth division of the army.

Clearly, Colombia is more complex than this perception implies. President Andrés Pastrana, his vice president, Colombian government ministers, diplomats, and top generals alike publicly denounce paramilitary groups. Increasingly, paramilitary fighters are arrested. This is a stark contrast to years past, when military commanders denied that paramilitaries even existed and government officials were largely silent about their activities. Today, Colombian officials routinely describe paramilitaries as criminals, an advance Human Rights Watch acknowledges.

Nevertheless, the reference to the "sixth division" reflects a reality that is in plain view. Human Rights Watch has documented abundant, detailed, and compelling evidence that certain Colombian army brigades and police detachments continue to promote, work with, support, profit from, and tolerate paramilitary groups, treating them as a force allied to and compatible with their own.

At their most brazen, the relationships described in this report involve active coordination during military  operations between government and paramilitary units; communication via radios, cellular telephones, and beepers; the sharing of intelligence, including the names of suspected guerrilla collaborators; the sharing of fighters, including active-duty soldiers serving in paramilitary units and paramilitary commanders lodging on military bases; the sharing of vehicles, including army trucks used to transport paramilitary fighters; coordination of army roadblocks, which routinely let heavily-armed paramilitary fighters pass; and payments made from paramilitaries to military officers for their support.

In the words of one Colombian municipal official, the relationship between Colombian military units, particularly the army, and paramilitaries is a "marriage."

Based on the evidence in this report, we contend that officers at the brigade and battalion level and in some police detachments routinely flout, ignore, or circumvent orders from above to break ties to paramilitaries. In violation of the law and the directives of their superiors, these officers continue close and regular relationships with the groups responsible for most human rights violations in Colombia.

Human Rights Watch holds the Pastrana administration responsible for its dramatic and costly failure to take prompt, effective action to establish control over the security forces, break their persistent ties to paramilitary groups, and ensure respect for human rights.  To date, the government's efforts have been ineffective or, in some cases detailed in this report, wholly absent.  Even as President Pastrana publicly deplores successive atrocities, each seemingly more gruesome than the last, the high-ranking officers he commands fail to take the critical steps necessary to prevent future killings by suspending security force members suspected of abuses, ensuring that their cases go before civilian judicial authorities, and pursuing and arresting paramilitaries.

For many Colombians, the existence of a "sixth division" translates into a daily terror that is impossible to evoke in these pages.  Heavily armed paramilitaries move virtually unimpeded, captured paramilitary leaders elude detention with ease, and government forces make no more than token efforts to pursue or capture paramilitaries even when they are in major cities, footsteps away from military or police bases, and engaged in macabre caravans of death.  Soldiers even tell civilians that paramilitaries will follow in their wake, prompting panic and forced displacement.  Witnesses brave enough to testify about the "sixth division" and its links to the security forces are threatened or murdered with numbing precision.

Meanwhile, paramilitaries give exclusive interviews to dozens of journalists, address presidents, international academics, and European government ministers, meet with high-level government officials, and even claim responsibility for their crimes and promise more, methodically expanding a reign of fear town after town, street after street, home after home, heart after heart.

In this report, Human Rights Watch focuses on three Colombian Army brigades. We also include information linking some police detachments with support and tolerance for paramilitary groups:

Twenty-Fourth Brigade: Human Rights Watch has collected evidence that in 1999 and 2000, the Twenty-Fourth Brigade based in Putumayo department actively coordinated operations with paramilitaries and some officers in charge of troops received regular payment from paramilitaries for their cooperation. This relationship persisted even as the U.S. planned and implemented its "push into southern Colombia" in the region under Twenty-Fourth Brigade control.  The Colombian counternarcotics battalions created by U.S. security assistance and funding and trained by the U.S. military actively coordinated with the Twenty-Fourth Brigade, using its facilities, intelligence, and logistical support, during the "push into southern Colombia."

Third Brigade: Building on evidence included in previous reports, Human Rights Watch has collected new information that the Third Brigade, based in Cali, Valle, has continued to promote, coordinate with, and assist paramilitaries in southwestern Colombia.   According to testimony that Human Rights Watch collected, Third Brigade officers maintained constant communication with paramilitaries in the field using cellular phones and radios. Soldiers also reportedly "moonlighted" as paramilitaries, and paramilitaries stayed on military bases and used military transportation. Soldiers also regularly threatened civilians by telling them that paramilitary forces would follow Colombian Army troops and carry out atrocities in their wake.

Fifth Brigade: The area under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Brigade, based in Bucaramanga, Santander, was the scene of a recent and successful paramilitary offensive.  Paramilitaries seized control of over a dozen towns along the Magdalena River, meeting virtually no resistance or even response from the Colombian security forces.   Paramilitaries made their first-ever bid to conquer a major city, Barrancabermeja.  Even as paramilitary fighters take over whole neighborhoods and issue threats, local military and police authorities remain largely passive, using excuses to elude responsibility for taking effective action.

Some government officials – the Attorney General (Fiscal), the members of his Human Rights Unit, investigators in the Attorney General's Technical Investigation Unit (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigaciones, CTI), the Public Advocate (Defensoría), and the Colombian National Police (CNP) leadership -- have taken action against paramilitaries. They have chronicled their abuses, arrested paramilitary leaders, seized their weapons, and prevented some massacres. But their actions have been consistently and effectively undermined, canceled out, or in some cases wholly reversed by actions promoted by the military-paramilitary alliance.

Eyewitnesses, municipal officials, and even the government's own investigators routinely delivered to the security forces detailed and current information about the exact  location of paramilitary bases; license plates, colors and types of paramilitary vehicles; cellular telephone and beeper numbers used by paramilitaries; and the names of paramilitaries. Yet despite dozens of "early warnings" of planned atrocities,  paramilitaries advanced, killed, mutilated, burned, destroyed, stole, and threatened with virtual impunity, often under the very noses of security force officers sworn to uphold public order.

In this report, Human Rights Watch describes several cases where the security forces, in particular the military, have not moved against paramilitaries or have engaged in actions that produced only delays and allowed paramilitaries to continue their activities with impunity. Troops arrived at the sites of serious abuses committed by paramilitaries only to count bodies, photograph damages, and make excuses for their failure to protect civilians and capture the paramilitaries responsible for abuses.  Meanwhile, hundreds  of arrest warrants against paramilitary leaders remain unenforced because the military has chosen not to execute them.

Important Colombian government offices – the Vice Presidency, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry, and especially the Armed Forces themselves – have failed to take the decisive action necessary to address this serious situation.   Instead, they have dedicated a great deal of energy and time to a public relations effort purporting to show that the military has made progress against paramilitaries. Human Rights Watch has reviewed many of the hundreds of reports, graphs, statements, press releases, pamphlets, posters, alerts, and Colombian government statistical reviews that make up this effort.  However, Human Rights Watch found that much of this information is misleading or partial and does not reflect an objective analysis or accurate reflection of what is happening on the ground.  The gulf between words and effective action remains vast.

Human Rights Watch addresses part of this report to U.S. policy in Colombia. U.S. law, known as the Leahy Provision, prohibits military aid from going to security force units engaged in abusive behavior until effective steps are taken to bring perpetrators to justice.   In addition, the U.S. Congress included human rights conditions specific to Colombia in an aid package that provided dramatically increased military aid to the country beginning in 2000.   In repeated interviews with Human Rights Watch, U.S. officials in Colombia and Washington have shown that they are aware of the "sixth division" and its pernicious effect on human rights.

However, Human Rights Watch contends, the U.S. has violated the spirit of its own laws and in some cases downplayed or  ignored  evidence of continuing ties between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups in order to fund Colombia's military and lobby for more aid, including to a unit implicated in a serious abuse.  On August 22, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a waiver that lifted the human rights conditions imposed by the U.S. Congress, in essence allowing security assistance to be provided to the Colombian military even as the State Department reported that some of its units continued to be implicated in support for paramilitary groups.

With one signature, the White House sent a direct message to Colombia's military leaders that overshadowed any other related to human rights.   Put simply, the message was that as long as the Colombian military cooperated with the U.S. antidrug strategy, American officials would waive human rights conditions and skirt their own human rights laws.

Judged by the Colombian military's behavior in the field – not by rhetoric or public relations pamphlets – its leaders understood this message clearly.   Even as Colombia's high command has agreed to scrub some units for human rights problems, the rest of the military appears to have a virtual carte blanche for continued, active coordination with the paramilitary groups responsible for most human rights violations in Colombia.

As we document, despite credible evidence linking a Colombian Air Force unit to an attack that killed seven children and was never properly investigated or punished, the U.S. has not suspended aid to this unit, required by law.  The law requiring suspension is not subject to any waiver.  In addition, there is compelling evidence of ties between paramilitaries and Colombian military units deployed in an antinarcotics campaign in southern Colombia, allowing U.S.-funded and trained troops to freely mix with units that maintain close ties with paramilitaries.

The Colombian government's failure to effectively address the problem of continuing collaboration between its forces and abusive paramilitaries and military impunity has contributed to a continuing, serious deterioration in human rights guarantees.  In 2000, political violence sharply increased in Colombia, the result of paramilitary attacks on civilians they claim are sympathetic to guerrillas and guerrilla attacks on civilians they claim are sympathetic to paramilitaries.  According to the Colombian National Police annual review, the number of massacres they recorded in 2000 increased by 22 percent over the previous year, most the work of paramilitaries who continue to enjoy, at the very least, the tolerance of the Colombian Armed Forces.   In 2000, an estimated 319,000 people were forced to flee their homes, the highest number of displaced persons recorded in the last five years.  In the words of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, these increases are "a dramatic reflection of the barbarity that we are seeing every day in Colombia."

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Colombian government should:

Øeffectively combat paramilitaries and permanently dismantle paramilitary organizations by capturing leaders and prosecuting and punishing those responsible for forming, organizing, leading, belonging to, assisting, and financing paramilitary groups, including the security force members who take part in this activity;

Øensure that impunity no longer protects those responsible, by action or tolerance, for human rights and international humanitarian law violations.  The Colombian government should fortify  efforts to effectively combat paramilitary groups and ensure that suspects, including government members, are prosecuted in civilian courts;

Øtake urgent measures to strengthen the protection of judicial officials, victims, and witnesses to cases by dedicating the necessary resources to their protection;

Øorder the military to cease asserting jurisdiction over cases that involve allegations of human rights and international humanitarian law violations, both of which belong before civilian courts.   In this regard, the new Military Penal Code and Civilian Penal Code should be interpreted and enforced in a way that reflects Colombia's responsibilities under the international treaties to which Colombia is a party and the rulings of Colombia's Constitutional Court;

Øfully implement existing plans and laws designed to protect and assist the forcibly displaced;

Østrengthen the Interior Ministry's program for the protection of human rights defenders and trade unionists, providing it with the resources necessary to address demand. The Colombian government should commission an external evaluation of the program to review its results and the problems it faces, and implement recommendations to improve performance;

Øadopt urgent measures necessary to effectively protect indigenous, community, and ethnic leaders who have been threatened;

Øensure that security force members and civilians arrested in connection with allegations of human rights or international humanitarian law violations are held in secure facilities within civilian prisons, with special measures taken to prevent escapes;

Øreform the rules governing investigations and disciplinary proceedings carried out by the Procuraduría, the government's Internal Affairs agency that oversees the conduct of government employees, including members of the military and police.  Currently, delays in investigation mean that many Internal Affairs investigations into serious human rights crimes must be shelved due to excessively short statutes of limitations, further limited by the passage of Security Law 81.  Also, the crime of murder is not included within the code of infractions as a reason for dismissal.  The Internal Affairs agency's powers of dismissal should be expanded to permit it to dismiss members of the security forces found to have committed murder. Currently, the maximum punishment allowed is a "severe reprimand," simply a letter in the individual's employment file;

Øsignificantly increase funding for the Attorney General's Human Rights Unit, including its witness protection program, travel, communications equipment, security, and evidence-gathering capability. The work of the Attorney General's office has contributed significantly to the protection of human rights and accountability for serious crimes, including crimes committed by Colombia's guerrillas.  Yet prosecutors and investigators find their budgets cut dramatically and lack the resources to fully investigate cases assigned to them;

The United States government should:

Øplace country-specific human rights conditions on all security assistance to Colombia that must be met before aid is released.  Among other conditions, the law should require that Colombia show tangible results in breaking ties between its security forces and paramilitary groups, purging and prosecuting officers who work with paramilitaries or tolerate their activity, and ensuring that civilian courts maintain jurisdiction over human rights and international humanitarian law crimes committed by members of the security forces.  This last condition reflects an August 1997 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling, which required that all cases involving crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations, including the aiding and abetting of paramilitary groups, be heard in civilian courts;

Øconsistently and strictly enforce the Leahy Provision.  Security force units against whom there is credible evidence of human rights violations, including the aiding and abetting of paramilitary groups, should be disqualified for receipt of U.S. security assistance or training until effective measures are taken to investigate and punish violations.   Effective measures must be more than the simple transfer out of a unit of the implicated individual.  To satisfy the Leahy Provision, that individual must face an investigation and possible prosecution in civilian courts;

Øapply the Leahy Provision to all intelligence-sharing to ensure that intelligence is not shared with or received from Colombian security force units that abuse human rights or passed to paramilitary groups that violate human rights;

Ørequire a section on the monitoring of country-specific human rights conditions and the application of the Leahy Provision in the State Department's annual report on human rights;

Øincrease financial support for programs that strengthen human rights, including the Attorney General's Human Rights Unit and protection for human rights defenders.   Funds should not be subject to any conditions and should be disbursed in a prompt and effective fashion even if security assistance is halted because Colombia has failed to meet human rights conditions;

Øappoint a full-time, civilian official in the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá whose duties are to oversee, administer, and ensure the prompt delivery of human rights assistance;

Øincrease civilian staff and resources assigned to the U.S. Embassy and State Department to vet Colombian security force units for compliance with human rights conditions.   Staff should be required to meet frequently with not only Colombian military and government sources of information, but also independent human rights groups, the church, and aid organizations.   The goal must be to gather as much reliable information as possible about reported human rights violations;

Øreview all visas granted to Colombian security force personnel and ensure that individuals against whom there is credible evidence of human rights abuse or support for paramilitary groups have their visas revoked or are denied visas to enter the United States;

Øinclude in all U.S. military advice and training detailed instruction regarding the obligation of all members of the military and security forces to uphold Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions, international agreements that provide rules for internal conflicts.  Training should include hypothetical situations that reflect Colombian reality, including the presence of paramilitary groups.   Students should be closely evaluated on their understanding and application of international humanitarian law.   Specialists from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should be invited to contribute to such training, and all existing training materials should be reviewed in coordination with ICRC representatives, the office of the Public Advocate, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Colombian Attorney General, and a representative of independent human rights groups to ensure that they reflect the highest standards of protection for human rights and international humanitarian law.

II. THE "SIXTH DIVISION": A PATTERN OF SUPPORT

The State does not exist as such. The only thing that is reality is the attack. You don't know if they are paramilitaries, the Army, the Navy, or the guerrillas. All of them are fearsome and arbitrary.

- "Mirta," a black activist from the Pacific coast

On January 17, 2001, an estimated fifty paramilitaries pulled dozens of residents from their homes in the village of Chengue, Sucre.

"They assembled them into two groups above the main square and across from the rudimentary health center," the Washington Post later reported. "Then, one by one, they killed the men by crushing their heads with heavy stones and a sledgehammer. When it was over, twenty-four men lay dead in pools of blood.   Two more were found later in shallow graves. As the troops left, they set fire to the village."[1]

Among the reported dead was a sixteen-year-old boy, whose head was severed from his body.[2]

The Washington Post reporter interviewed more than two dozen residents who said that the Colombian military helped coordinate the massacre by providing safe passage to fighters who identified themselves as paramilitaries. They said that the military sealed off the area by conducting a mock daylong battle, allowing the paramilitaries to search out and kill the Colombians they had targeted for death.[3]

Months earlier, local authorities warned military, police, and government officials that paramilitaries planned to carry out a massacre. Yet their pleas for protection proved futile.[4]   Even as paramilitaries moved toward Chengue to commit the massacre, timely information from local police on their vehicles, whereabouts, and direction was ignored by military commanders responsible for the area.[5]

Months later, Navy soldier Rubén Darío Rojas was arrested and charged with supplying weapons to paramilitaries and helping coordinate the attack.   In addition, Colombia's Internal Affairs agency filed disciplinary charges against Brig. Gen. Rodrigo Quiñones and five other security force officers for allegedly ignoring detailed information about paramilitary movements in the area and taking no measures to prevent paramilitaries from committing the massacre. At the time, Quiñones was the commander of the first Naval Brigade, responsible for the Chengue region.[6]

The Chengue case is far from unusual.   Human Rights Watch received similar accounts of abuses from dozens of eyewitnesses, government investigators, human rights defenders, and journalists in 2000 and during a mission to Colombia in January 2001, when the Chengue massacre took place.  Consistently, the accounts described Colombia's security forces, in particular the Colombian Army, as tolerating, supporting, and in some regions actively coordinating with paramilitaries.  Even as Colombia's elected authorities and military high command claimed to promote human rights, Human Rights Watch found abundant, credible evidence of continued collaboration with and support for the paramilitary groups responsible for most human rights violations in Colombia.

"A relationship continues to exist between some parts of the armed forces and paramilitaries," a high level government investigator, who spoke frankly only  under  conditions of anonymity, told Human Rights Watch. "To the present day, the government still lacks a clear policy for how to combat them."[7]

This relationship is also reflected in increased complaints by citizens of direct government support for paramilitary groups.  A recent report by the government's Internal Affairs agency, responsible for investigating and sanctioning administrative infractions by government officials, found that these complaints have risen over the past several years, led by 149 complaints against the Colombian Army.[8]

In addition, Human Rights Watch continued to register broad tolerance in the military for paramilitary atrocities.  Again and again, civilian authorities advised military commanders well in advance of paramilitary massacres, or alerted them even as those massacres were unfolding.  Just as reliably, the military failed to act effectively to prevent killings, protect civilians, or pursue perpetrators once massacres began. Instead they pled any number of excuses – weather, distance, danger, overwork, jurisdiction – for inaction. The result, however, was reliably macabre, as civilians found themselves at the mercy of killers who counted on this tolerance to execute, burn, and terrorize.

For civilian authorities struggling to prompt action from the military, the frustration was profound. The following story of a massacre in Llorente, Nariño, was told to Human Rights Watch by a Colombian government official who requested anonymity.  According to an eyewitness who this official interviewed, approximately 200 paramilitaries entered Llorente and forced its residents to gather in the central park around one a.m. on March 24, 2001. With them was an indigenous man who appeared badly beaten. This informant began to point at people whom he accused of assisting guerrillas.  After about forty people were separated from the crowd of 6,000, the witness said, the paramilitaries forced all forty onto a public bus that they had seized.  The paramilitaries then stole several chainsaws from locals.[9]

That same night of the massacre, the governor of Nariño called the commander of the Navy in Tumaco to request his assistance in preventing the massacre.  The Commander informed him that he had no knowledge of this matter and that he would investigate the next day.  The governor told him that his duty was to go immediately to protect the civilian population. The commander then said that he lacked jurisdiction over the areas, and that the jurisdiction corresponded to the [Colombian Army] battalion in Ipiales [the General José María Cabal Mechanized Cavalry Battalion No. Three] (attention: this battalion is 155 miles away and the Navy base only eighteen miles away).  Confronted by this situation, the governor called the Ipiales base commander and this commander told him that at that hour he could do nothing because of the danger to his troops because in this area there were a lot of guerrillas, and so he promised to do it within two days.  Faced with this response, the governor called the Third Division commander in Cali, who is responsible for the department of Nariño. The governor warned this general that if there was a massacre, he would be responsible for it through failing to do his duty (omission). In the end, nothing was done. The day after the massacre, the Cali Third Division commander called the governor to tell him that the information that he had was that these were clashes between the paramilitaries and the FARC. This information was released to the press... What really happened is that there was combat [between guerrillas and paramilitaries] afterwards and on the outskirts of the town. The army press release said nothing about the forty people [who were taken away in the bus]. The governor has publicly contradicted the military's version of events. The Army battalion in Ipiales arrived only at 5 p.m. on March 30, that is, six days after the massacre. The Navy never came. For those six days, the paramilitaries remained in control of the town and did not allow anyone to come in, least of all the press. Like in other massacres, the omission or inaction of the military was clear.  Also, they gave the paramilitaries plenty of time to leave.                       

Subsequently, Colombia's Public Advocate (Defensoría del Pueblo), a government office charged with defending the rights of citizens,  formally asked the Internal Affairs agency to open a disciplinary investigation of the Third Division for failure to act, which in effect allowed the massacre to take place.[10]

Sources interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had recent, direct contact with the United Self-Defense Forces (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC) in the field described them as a well organized, armed, and equipped force – hardly one that appeared to be pursued aggressively by government forces.

The persistent ties between many units of the Colombian military and the AUC have contributed to what the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) has declared a "noticeable decline in respect for human

rights and international humanitarian law in Colombia."[11] This bleak assessment is supported by the Colombian National Police (CNP) annual review for 2000.   In it, the CNP concluded that the number of recorded massacres increased from 168 to 236, a rise of almost 40 percent over 1999.  The total number of deaths recorded in these massacres increased even more, totaling 1,226 people, 297 more than in l999 and representing an increase of 32 percent.[12]

Overall, the average number of victims of political violence and deaths in combat rose in 2000 from fourteen to twenty per day according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists (Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, CCJ), a respected human rights group.   Also in 2000, an estimated 319,000 people were forcibly displaced from their homes by political violence, the highest number of displaced persons recorded in a single year in the last five years.[13] The CCJ termed the increase "alarming... it is a dramatic reflection of the barbarity that we are seeing every day in Colombia."[14]

This trend appears to be worsening in 2001, with authorities recording twenty-six massacres in only the first eighteen days of January, provoking a death toll of 170 Colombians.[15] By the end of April, Colombia's social service agency announced that killings that were the result of political violence continued to run at roughly double the number registered the previous year.[16]

Most of the massacres were the work of paramilitary groups, whose growth has been explosive during President Pastrana's administration. The umbrella group that includes most paramilitaries is the AUC, led until June 2001 by Carlos Castaño, a former Colombian Army guide.[17] Castaño built the AUC from the remnants of a  private army organized by his brother, Fidel, who terrorized the northern departments of Córdoba and Antioquia in the late 1980s.[18]

In 1996, Castaño told Human Rights Watch that he commanded 2,000 armed and trained fighters, an affirmation that was confirmed by  Colombian government analysts.[19]  By 2000, he claimed 11,200 fighters, an increase of 460 percent in just four years.[20]  Though official estimates of the number of paramilitaries who are armed and trained are significantly lower, it is clear that the AUC has achieved an alarming degree of strength, mobility, firepower, and technological capacity.[21]

Throughout Colombia, forces allied under the AUC's name maintain numerous and permanent bases and roadblocks and move with apparent ease. They employ faxes, the Internet, sport utility vehicles and pick up trucks, radios, helicopters, laptops, and cellular and satellite telephones to disseminate threats, identify targets, prepare death lists, and coordinate massacres. "There has been a significant advance by paramilitaries and it is very disturbing," commented a high level government investigator consulted by Human Rights Watch.[22]

The increasing strength of paramilitaries is not due to military support or government inaction alone, it should be noted. As insecurity throughout Colombia advances, some Colombians have come to see paramilitaries and their methods as a lamentable, but necessary evil.  One Colombian recounted to Human Rights Watch how his mother-in-law, who had recently moved to the Middle Magdalena region, was visited immediately by AUC paramilitaries, who gave her the cellular telephone number of the local AUC commander to use in case of emergency, much like a police hot line. "They guarantee that they will react within fifteen minutes if she reports unusual activity," her son-in-law told Human Rights Watch.[23]

Castaño has taken advantage of this development by waging a media campaign to promote the paramilitary model as the only way to defeat guerrillas. In March 2000, Castaño gave the first of television interviews to Colombian channel Caracol. Since, interviews with him have been published by the Washington Post, Le Monde, the BBC, Time magazine, and Reuters news agency, as well as Colombia's dailies El Tiempo and El Colombiano.   The AUC regularly posts these interviews – as well as its own opinion pieces on Colombian and world events – on its web site.[24]

Guerrillas opposed to the Colombian government also continue to commit serious abuses, including massacres, extrajudicial executions, hostage-taking, and the use of indiscriminate weapons such as gas cylinder bombs. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned these abuses and has called on Colombia's guerrilla leaders to issue clear and strict instructions to their forces to cease immediately all activities that violate international humanitarian law. These instructions should not be subject to any negotiation, since they are obligatory and apply to all parties to the conflict equally and independent of the compliance of other parties.[25]

As violence increases, the distinction between combatants frays in the minds of many Colombians. "The State does not exist as such," commented "Mirta," a black activist from Colombia's Pacific coast who asked Human Rights Watch for anonymity. "The only thing that is reality is the attack. You don't know if they are paramilitaries, the Army, the Navy, or the guerrillas. All of them are fearsome and arbitrary."[26][PHOTO 2]

Putumayo (Twenty-Fourth Brigade)                                              

Dario always knew in advance about Army raids, so he could make arrangements so that  nothing was found. The paramilitaries had radios and cellular phones, and were in close communication with police agents and their military contacts.

- "Pilar," a bookkeeper who worked for the AUC    

When the witness we call "Pilar" first met the man she knew as "Dario" in February 2000, she assumed he was a Colombian Army soldier. Dressed in camouflage, Dario was standing with a Colombian Army officer she knew as Major Cuéllar, Pilar told Human Rights Watch. The two met in Puerto Asís, Putumayo department's largest urban center.[27]

Pilar said that Major Cuéllar introduced Dario to her as a personal friend.[28] According to Colombian government documents cited in this report, at the time a Major Cuéllar was the commander of the "Domingo Rico" Infantry Battalion No. Twenty-Five, based in nearby Villagarzón and part of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade.[29]

Later, Pilar said, Dario asked for help with bookkeeping tasks.  But it was not until a month later that she says she realized that his real job was as the AUC's financial chief in the Putumayo.[30]

"A friend who had seen us talking at the Metropolis discotheque pulled me aside and asked me if I realized that he was a paramilitary leader," Pilar told Human Rights Watch during an interview in Puerto Asís.  The Metropolis is the city's largest dance hall. "By that time, I had begun to do some work for him, and feared that if I stopped suddenly, he would get suspicious. So I continued working for him until September."[31]

That was Pilar's introduction to the alliance that eyewitnesses, government investigators, and local authorities told Human Rights Watch existed between the Twenty-Fourth Brigade, some CNP officers, and paramilitaries from 1999 and throughout 2000.  While in the Putumayo in January 2001, Human Rights Watch obtained extensive, detailed, and consistent evidence showing that the Twenty-Fourth Brigade maintained a close alliance with the paramilitaries, resulting in extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, and death threats.  The Twenty-Fourth Brigade regularly coordinated actions with paramilitaries and allowed them to operate openly, and even established one of their principal bases within a short walk of an army installation.   At their base, paramilitaries held a training camp that drew dozens of novice fighters from across Colombia.  According to Pilar and confirmed by a local official, known as the personero, paramilitaries regularly paid military officers for their cooperation.

In one case confirmed by the personero and detailed in this report, evidence suggests that an army officer arranged to have a close relative killed by paramilitaries.  In another that we described in these pages, Óscar Cardona, a grieving father whose son was murdered by paramilitaries, haggled over a reparations payment that was supervised by CNP officers.

          To date, government authorities have done little to investigate this alliance or the Colombian Army officers who may have sponsored it.   Some soldiers have been transferred out of the Putumayo, and one battalion was removed for "retraining." However, the officer who led the Twenty-Fourth Brigade in 2000, Col. Gabriel Ramón Díaz Ortiz, is scheduled for promotion to general and appears to be facing no disciplinary action.  As this report went to press, Human Rights Watch continued to receive information that the alliance between the Twenty-Fourth Brigade and paramilitaries continued.

AUC Push into Putumayo

Residents told Human Rights Watch that the AUC first announced its intention to send forces to the Putumayo in January 1998.  For over a decade, the FARC-EP had exercised de facto control over the region, even acting as a local judicial and police force.[32] With the arrival of increased coca cultivation in the 1990s, much of it taxed by guerrillas, the Putumayo had become an important strategic and financial bulwark for the FARC-EP that paramilitaries sought to make their own.[33]

A year after its announcement, the AUC committed the largest massacre to date in the Putumayo, the January 9, 1999 killing of at least twenty-six people and the forcible disappearance of fourteen more in the village of El Tigre, near Puerto Asís.[34]

Since that time, residents told Human Rights Watch, the paramilitary presence grew village by village, town by town.  By the time another year had passed, the paramilitaries controlled the city of Puerto Asís and maintained regular roadblocks, which residents had to negotiate even when on mundane errands.   On September 22, 2000, for instance, José Agustín Martínez escorted his mother across the main bridge over the Putumayo River, which divides Colombia from Ecuador. A unicyclist, Martínez was not from the Putumayo, but was performing with the Latin Brothers circus in Puerto Asís. According to his wife, who testified later to authorities, the paramilitaries who stopped him at an AUC roadblock on the Colombian side of the border had another José Martínez -- a common name in Colombia -- on a death list. Martínez's mother told his wife that the paramilitaries seized him, and Martínez remains "disappeared."[35]

So many people were murdered, the local priest told Human Rights Watch, that no one has kept accurate records.  His own registry, filled with the names and causes of death of people who had received a Catholic burial, was one of the few ways to grasp the level of fear and grief that had seized the town.   Most featured the word "murder" (asesinato) as the cause of death, and the priest surmised that most were carried out by paramilitaries or the FARC-EP.[36] [PHOTO 3]

Germán Martínez (no relation) is the Puerto Asís personero who took the wife's testimony.  The personero is the municipal official whose job it is to accept complaints from citizens and ensure that they reach the proper authorities. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Martínez told Human Rights Watch, he collected dozens of similar testimonies about forced disappearances, murders, and threats at the hands of paramilitaries.  He also collected evidence that the paramilitaries worked with the support and tolerance of the Colombian Army and the Puerto Asís police.[37]

To Human Rights Watch as well as in official documents, Martínez described the relationship as a "marriage" (matrimonio).[38]

Martínez discussed his concerns frequently and publicly with military and police officers, hoping to stop the killings and prompt the arrests of those responsible.  On February 4, 2000, for instance, the Puerto Asís mayor called a special meeting to discuss a wave of killings.  Martínez publicly stated that part of the problem was that paramilitaries were "untouchable" even though he had personally informed the police about their role in at least four forced disappearances.[39]

The Colombian Army and Puerto Asís police, he said, reacted to his reports not by investigating and carrying out arrests, but by denying his information and threatening him:

Near the base that belongs to the Twenty-Fifth Battalion [part of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade], located at the road exiting Puerto Asís, toward Santana, there is a place occupied by the paramilitaries only 500 meters [a third of a mile] away, it is an abandoned house, on that same road they take people who have been disappeared from the town of Puerto Asís to the Hacienda Villa Sandra... Since Colonel Grabriel (sic) Díaz, commander of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade of the army said that he was not aware of the presence of paramilitary groups in this sector and had no information, I informed him as the personero that groups there acted with full liberty within the town of Puerto Asís and that they were located in the HACIENDA VILLA SANDRA, close to the Twenty-Fifth Battalion and the headquarters of the [Twenty-Fourth] Brigade. This information made it to the paramilitaries, who threatened me for what I had said during the Security Council meeting.  Because of this Security Council meeting, I was later threatened by [Colombian National Police] Major Carlos Kenedy Veloza Lancheros, of the police, who personally told me that he was extremely upset and outraged because of what I had said and that my problem wasn't the result of my legal duties but my loose tongue, he was telling me at the end, 'We'll see who explodes first, you or me'..."[40]

The Testimony of CNP Agent Gilberto López

Another Puerto Asís resident who testified formally about ties between the security forces and paramilitaries came from inside the police force. CNP agent Gilberto López first approached the personero on August 4, 2000 to complain about what he termed were "irregularities" committed by paramilitary groups.[41]

López returned a month later to expand his original statement. On August 13, 2000, he recounted, he received a phone call from the AUC's military commander in the Putumayo, known as "Camilo." While Dario handled the finances, the AUC's military commander, Camilo, was in charge of fighting.   He was reputedly a former police lieutenant who had been discharged after being linked to paramilitaries and human rights violations while serving in the Urabá region.[42] 

López said that Camilo informed him that paramilitaries would be visiting the police detachment in Orito, the town an hour's travel from Puerto Asís where López was working at the time. They wanted, he told the personero, to "talk some things over with me." One of the emissaries was a paramilitary who called himself "Yaír":

[Yaír] had spoken with all of the town's authorities and I was the only one left... he told me that a high-ranking member of his organization had authorized a monthly salary for me, without anything required from me and that I should take it as a kind of collaboration and that it was a good sum of money... The companion of this man insisted that I accept this money two other times, that I take it and think it over very carefully.[43]

Agent López made a third and final declaration to the personero the next day, this time identifying a commanding officer and other agents who he said worked directly with paramilitaries.  López described how he served as the bodyguard for CNP Major Carlos Kenedy Veloza, who in April had ordered López to meet him at a location in Puerto Asís.   But Major Veloza, another police bodyguard, and the police driver were not there when López arrived, he claimed.  Later, López testified, the bodyguard and driver told him that Major Veloza had missed the meeting because he had been with paramilitary leaders in Villa Sandra, the paramilitary base.[44]

The Killing of Óscar Cardona

Information about Major Veloza's visit to Villa Sandra came to the personero independently, from a local resident who said that he had witnessed it.

In his testimony, Óscar Cardona Aguirre explained that his son, also named Óscar, had been killed by paramilitaries in Puerto Asís on April 30, 2000. After taking his son's body from the hospital to the family home for a wake, Cardona went to Villa Sandra to talk directly with AUC commander Camilo.  Cardona was well known to the police, since he did repairs at the police station:

At about 2:30 pm, I left for the Villa Sandra Ranch where I found the paramilitaries meeting with Major Carlos Veloza and with Captain Sierra seated in a police car and I spoke directly with the commander known as alias "CAMILO," so three of us went inside leaving the bodyguards on the first floor and we went to the second floor with Camilo, we greeted each other and Major Veloza said, "I never wanted to come here, but because of these circumstances that have occurred you people have offended us and you have offended me for the crap you pulled with the son of this respected craftsman, who is a person that we value very much in Puerto Asís, because he makes sure that everything in our station works well, so I want you to clarify what happened with this murder."[45]

Cardona said that Camilo tried to explain by saying that the paramilitaries had information indicating that Cardona's son had stolen a motorcycle.  But the boy's father explained that the motorcycle belonged to a friend, who had lent his son the vehicle.  Accepting that his men had made an error, Camilo then opened a briefcase, took out U.S. $200, and handed it to Cardona, saying, "Take this, sir, it won't return your son to you, but it will help with the expenses."[46]

Later that evening, another paramilitary who called himself "Mario" came to Cardona's home.   Afraid that he would be killed for confronting Camilo, Cardona told his daughter to call Captain Sierra.  Captain Sierra came immediately, saw Mario, but did nothing.  When Cardona's daughter asked Mario why he had come, he said it was to apologize.  He gave the Cardona family another U.S. $500.[47]

AUC Finances in the Putumayo

It was not unusual for paramilitaries to pay local residents for their "mistakes" – or pay police and military officers for their collaboration, as the AUC had offered to do with Agent López.  Pilar told Human Rights Watch that she had direct knowledge of how the paramilitaries organized their finances in 2000 since she was responsible for recording their income and expenses on a computer diskette, delivering monthly reports to Dario, the AUC's financial chief, and even hand-carrying some payments to officers' families.

Among the regular expenses, she said, were monthly payments to police and military officers, some of whom would even visit Dario's house to pick up cash.  She told Human Rights Watch that these payments were based on rank. "Each captain received between U.S. $2,000 and U.S. $3,000 per month. Majors got U.S. $2,500.  A lieutenant receives U.S. $1,500. The colonels also got paid, but not directly," Pilar noted. "They would send intermediaries to pick up the cash."[48]

Pilar said she personally sent money to the wife of one Twenty-Fourth Brigade major in August and October by using Servientrega, a local wire service.[49] The personero told Human Rights Watch that he was later able to confirm this transaction by consulting the Servientrega records.[50]

Pilar said she occasionally saw the same Twenty-Fourth Brigade major at Dario's house in Puerto Asís and also a Colombian Army captain.  Another eager CNP Anti-Narcotics agent also came to the house to collect his March payment, Pilar recalled, though she did not know his name. "I had dropped off the diskette [of accounts] and saw his CNP pickup truck outside.  He was inside counting his money."[51]

Once, Pilar said, Dario told her that he had paid a different Twenty-Fourth Brigade major over U.S. $12,500 to acquire military uniforms. "The major was tall and dark-skinned," Pilar recalled. "He never delivered the uniforms, though, and Dario was angry at him."[52]

In a formal declaration Pilar made to the personero, she explained that the requests for cash were constant. "Dario once told me that he was exhausted, completely sick, of all of these people from the army and police who thought he was the milkman (lechero), if it wasn't asking for their U.S. $100, $150, then it would be for airline tickets. I never learned the name of this one officer, but I know he belonged to the police, and he was asking for U.S. $20,000, so that he could buy some real estate in Bogotá."[53]

Overall, this money appears to have been a wise investment for the AUC. Despite intense scrutiny and dozens of visits from international missions and foreign journalists, the Puerto Asís police and Twenty-Fourth Brigade consistently denied any link to paramilitary groups in the region, even as the relationship was obvious. One taxi driver told Human Rights Watch how he saw known paramilitaries regularly walk through the doors of the airport, a facility that is heavily guarded by police and the Twenty-Fourth Brigade.[54]

"Dario always knew in advance about army raids, so could make arrangements so that nothing was found," Pilar explained. "They had radios and cellular phones, and were in close communication with police agents and their military contacts."[55]

Pilar also took care of the AUC's other expenses, including salaries for fighters and other expenses. In the Putumayo, she told Human Rights Watch, paramilitary fighters received a salary that depended on experience, rank, and location. "Fighters in rural areas got a minimum of U.S. $275 per month, which included money for food. In urban areas, they got U.S. $350 per month, increased if they were promoted."[56]

She said fixed expenses included guns, munitions, provisions, and telephone bills. Extras could be anything from coffins for paramilitaries killed in combat to extras to pay informants.   Overall, according to Pilar, she oversaw a budget of U.S. $650,000 per month.[57]

According to Pilar, most of the income she registered each month came from cocaine taxes. Wholesalers paid paramilitaries a fee for every kilo of raw cocaine bought in villages that they controlled. Laboratories where raw cocaine was crystallized also paid a fee. For example, a small laboratory would pay the paramilitaries at least U.S. $ 3,500 a month, she said.[58]

Once Pilar completed her monthly report, she would record it on a floppy disk and deliver the disk to Dario. "Dario would send the disk to a man he called Rafael, in Cali. He was Dario's commander, and had a direct link to one of Carlos Castaño's brothers, who is part of the AUC high command."[59]

Rafael often visited Puerto Asís, Pilar told Human Rights Watch.  In July 2000, she said, he presided over a paramilitary training camp held at Villa Sandra. The camp drew novice fighters from all over Colombia, Pilar noted, including one woman who won a contest for overall combat excellence. To get there, paramilitaries regularly and even daily passed in front of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade. "Dario told me that paramilitaries from all over Colombia came for a two-week training session, so he needed to spend extra money on beds, food, and other supplies," Pilar told Human Rights Watch.[60]

Puerto Vega Attack

Pilar also said that Dario and other paramilitaries frequently told her that they coordinated military operations directly with the Twenty-Fourth Brigade, including a June 2000 attack on Puerto Vega, a port just across the Putumayo River from Puerto Asís. Dozens of journalists had chronicled how the FARC-EP controlled the town, both before and after the clash.[61]

The Colombian military announced its action in Puerto Vega, claiming that soldiers had killed a FARC-EP commander called "Rodolfo," rumored to be the brother of Raúl Reyes, a member of the FARC-EP's General Secretariat.[62]

According to Pilar, however, the attack was carried out jointly with the AUC:

The paramilitaries told me that their commanders had been transported in an army helicopter. An informant from the area was the one who offered to take them in. During combat, the paramilitaries killed two guerrillas, and as a reward, the paramilitaries got their belongings, including Rodolfo's portable CD player. I saw about ten of them at Dario's house when they came back from the combat, still with their faces painted and in uniform. Two of the paramilitaries, who called themselves Yaír and Coco, claimed they had killed Rodolfo, not the army.[63]

According to Pilar, Yaír was among the AUC fighters who was a former army soldier. Interviewed independently by Reuters in May 2000, Yaír claimed to have served in the Colombian Army's Special Forces and to have received training from U.S. Special Forces Rangers and Navy SEALs during his eight years in the Colombian military. "We have got military and operational capacity to clear these zones where the guerrillas are ... so that army troops can set up their bases for supply areas for vehicles and other modes of transport," Yaír told Reuters.[64]          

The Workplace Battleground

Hoping to extricate herself from work with the AUC, Pilar accepted a job in a public institution in Puerto Asís in September 2000. To her surprise, she found it almost as dangerous as doing Dario's accounts, she told Human Rights Watch. The workplace, Pilar said, "was an inferno." To her dismay, she discovered that the battle between the FARC-EP, paramilitaries, and the security forces continued within its walls.[65]

Pilar worked for a deputy administrator.  After October, she said, she no longer did accounts for Dario, but continued to receive frequent calls from him, which she believed reflected a romantic interest that was not reciprocated. Yet she feared that if she did not accept his calls, he would endanger her and her family.[66]

"Dario told me that one of the [managers] had asked paramilitaries for help to get rid of the director, so that this [manager] could become the director," Pilar recalled in her conversation with Human Rights Watch. Both the current director and the rival who wanted his position were summoned to Villa Sandra at least once, Pilar told Human Rights Watch. "Luckily, the director resigned, and [the aspiring rival] became the new director." The alternative, Pilar noted, was for the incumbent director to risk being killed so that his rival, who had enlisted paramilitary support, could take his place.[67]

Similar tension was evident in the town's only hospital, where guerrillas and paramilitaries vied for control and access to the doctors and medicine. On September 1, 2000, a local family brought their year-old son, Brayan Moreno Guamán, to the emergency room.  Dissatisfied with the treatment, they took him home the following day, according to the pediatrician who monitored him. Late that afternoon, the pediatrician, Dr. María Fernanda Ramírez, received an urgent call to return to the hospital.  In a declaration Dr. Ramírez later gave to the Puerto Asís personero, she described what happened:

The emergency room doctor who was on call called me to say that the family members of the patient were in the emergency room with the Paramilitaries calling for my immediate presence... I went immediately to the emergency room, and two minutes later two men arrived and one of them is the grandfather of the patient and the other told me that he needed to hear my version of what had happened with the patient, because he had information that I had not properly treated the boy.[68]

Dr. Ramírez later discovered that a nurse may have treated the family brusquely. Out of concern for their ailing son, they had appealed to the most powerful authorities in town – the AUC.  In her declaration, Dr. Ramírez described how armed paramilitaries regularly waited at the hospital while colleagues were undergoing treatment, even as police and army soldiers came and went normally.[69]

          Word spread quickly that Dr. Ramírez had reported the incident to the personero and claimed that the paramilitaries had threatened her. While paramilitaries may have overlooked the incident itself, they did not tolerate making it public and drawing unwanted attention to their control over Puerto Asís.

          According to Pilar, Dario called her and lamented that he had orders to kill Dr. Ramírez. "Dario called me to say that he was amazed that they were going to kill a doctor."[70] However, Dr. Ramírez fled Puerto Asís before the week was out, and has since left Colombia.[71]

The "Disappearance" of "Nancy"

          Pilar also helped the personero untangle a case that took place in 2000. It involved the "disappearance" of "Nancy," a student who vanished in Puerto Asís.[72]

          "["Nancy's"] father came to my office to report that she had vanished," Martínez told Human Rights Watch. "Her father told me that [a close relative], a Colombian Army [officer] working at the Thirty-First Battalion in Orito, had called her asking her to come to Orito to help him solve a problem. She borrowed plane fare from her father and arrived on the regular Satena flight. Then she vanished. When her father called [the Army officer], he claimed that he had never asked her to come to Orito."[73]

          Martínez counseled the worried father to post flyers around Puerto Asís with Nancy's photograph and a number to call, which he did. "Several days later, I was taking down information from Pilar, who mentioned something about one of the paramilitaries saying that after they had seen a flyer, they realized that they had mistakenly killed an innocent person."[74]

          In her declaration to the personero, Pilar recounted how Dario had told her that one of their cellular telephones had "gotten too hot... I remember that he called me very worried, isterical [sic], 'Ha, there are many flyers stuck on the walls of the hospital, what a mess, just because I lent some telephones to someone from the Army and he got them hot for us, because he, well, he gave us some information and in the end what they did was a personal favor and this was just a mess... because this soldier had said that it was a guerrilla arriving on the airplane."[75]

          "Putting the two testimonies together," Martínez told Human Rights Watch, "I discovered that the paramilitaries were referring to Nancy." For personal reasons, Martínez learned, the army officer had wanted to get rid of her. "So he told the paramilitaries that a female guerrilla that looked like his relative was going to get off the Satena flight that day. What appears to have happened is that they took Nancy directly from the airport and killed her. I believe she may be one of the people buried at Villa Sandra. The Army officer used one of the paramilitary cellular telephones to make the call, as I later was able to document with telephone company records."[76]

Official Investigations

The insistent and detailed work of the Puerto Asís personero prompted several visits by the Bogotá-based office of the UNHCHR. After expressing its concern repeatedly to the government about the brazen alliance of the security forces and paramilitaries -- and receiving no effective response -- High Commissioner Mary Robinson included this description of the situation in her annual report, published in February 2001:

It is common knowledge that a paramilitary roadblock stands at the entrance to the settlement of "El Placer,: only fifteen minutes away from La Hormiga (Putumayo), where a Twenty-Fourth Brigade army battalion is stationed. Eight months after the Office reported to the authorities that it had seen it, the roadblock was still there. The military authorities denied its existence in writing. This Office also observed that paramilitaries  were still operating at the Villa Sandra estate between Puerto Asís and Santa Ana in the same department, a few minutes from the Twenty-Fourth Brigade base. [The Office] was later informed that two raids had been made by the security forces, apparently without result; yet the existence and maintenance of this position are public knowledge -- so much so that it has been visited repeatedly by international journalists who have published interviews with the paramilitary commander. Reports received by the Office even speak of meetings between paramilitaries and members of the security forces at the Villa Sandra estate. In late July, the Office warned the authorities of an imminent paramilitary raid on the inner city area of La Dorada... which indeed took place on September 21. The paramilitaries remained in the area for several weeks despite the fact that it is only a few minutes away from the Army "La Hormiga" base.[77]

In  September, investigators sent personally by Colombia's Internal Affairs chief as a result of the U.N. office's concerns arrived in Puerto Asís. It is unusual for Internal Affairs to send top investigators, reserved for cases that are particularly sensitive and that may involve crimes committed by high ranking officials. In his statement to Internal Affairs investigators, Martínez once again summarized the wave of killings and forced disappearances that had overwhelmed his office:

I can say that I have myself seen on several occasions members of the government  security forces, the Army, conversing in public places with people who are known as Paramilitaries. I can say without doubt that there is not omission [on the part of the security forces], but that what exists here is a coordination between the legal forces that one supposes are legal and the illegal forces that one supposes to be illegal.[78]

A day later, Internal Affairs investigators noted that one paramilitary house could be viewed "perfectly" from a Twenty-Fourth Brigade base and was less than 500 feet from its heavily guarded entrance.  Further along the road was Villa Sandra, where investigators noted that armed and uniformed AUC members were playing pool in full view of the heavy traffic.[79]

During its visit to Puerto Asís, Human Rights Watch was able to document the geography that Martínez, the U.N. office, and Internal Affairs describe to underscore the proximity between the security forces and paramilitaries.   Beginning at the airport, a heavily militarized road leads west out of town.  During the course of two days, Human Rights Watch observed several Colombian Army units patrolling the road in full battle gear. In quick succession, the road passes the Anti-Narcotics police, the paramilitary base at the Villa Sandra ranch, and the Twenty-Fourth Brigade.  The entire trip from the airport to the Twenty-Fourth Brigade took Human Rights Watch twenty minutes.  By the time Human Rights Watch visited Puerto Asís, Pilar and the personero told us, Dario and the group's new military commander, "Enrique," had moved their headquarters to the town of La Hormiga, and Villa Sandra appeared deserted.   

While in Puerto Asís, Reuters noted how paramilitaries, whom locals called "Power Rangers" after the popular cartoon series, mounted patrols both day and night in town, "under the very nose of a sizable police detachment and the army's Twenty-Fourth Brigade. Despite three arrest warrants issued since he joined the AUC three years ago, Yaír, named after an Israeli mercenary who trained drug mob assassins in the 1980s, moves freely in and out of town, passing unhindered through military checkpoints."[80]

While traveling to the nearby village of La Hormiga on public transportation, Internal Affairs investigators were stopped by three armed AUC paramilitaries dressed in civilian clothes. This roadblock had been a permanent fixture for a year, since paramilitaries carried out the massacre of eleven people in the nearby hamlet of El Placer on November 7, 1999.[81] La Hormiga is under the control of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade and its "Sebastián de Belalcazar" Counterguerrilla Battalion No. 31.

          During the stop, the paramilitaries demanded identification and an explanation of the purpose of the visit from each passenger. Once in town, the investigators were followed by another paramilitary wearing a camouflage uniform, AUC armband, and carrying a rifle. La Hormiga was heavily militarized, but Internal Affairs investigators reported that it was impossible for the investigators to distinguish between Colombian Army and paramilitary fighters:

We say for the record stated here that during the time that we remained in the town, we observed constant patrolling by the members of self-defense groups, in pick up trucks and on foot, and we saw that they wore the uniforms reserved for the sole use of the military forces, and on their uniforms it was possible to see the patch saying 'Army.'[82]

Five days after the Internal Affairs investigators took that statement, the FARC-EP enforced an armed strike in Putumayo department, prohibiting movement completely.   At one roadblock, FARC-EP guerrillas lectured a correspondent from the San Francisco Chronicle about the reasons for the strike, which threatened to starve the region's 350,000 residents and deprive them of basic services like health care.  Two miles down the road, Colombian Army Sgt. Jairo López calmly explained to the same reporter that once his unit moved on, paramilitaries would take control. "They have a list [of people they intended to kill]," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "There are lots – 20 or 30 on it."[83]

          On the basis of their investigation, Internal Affairs investigators invoked a special procedure that asks the Internal Affairs chief to interview implicated government officials immediately and recommend specific administrative disciplinary measures, including dismissal or fines.  Although the measures were invoked on October 9, 2000, as of the time this report went to press, Internal Affairs had yet to take any measures, an omission that has not been explained.[84]

          To our knowledge, all of the officers named in the Internal Affairs investigation for alleged failure to do their duty and take action against paramilitaries – Army Colonel Gabriel Díaz and CNP Captains Ohover de Jesús Cáceres Díaz, Jorge Raúl Sierra Suárez, Javier Alexander Parra Prada, and Major Carlos Veloza Lancheros -- remain on active duty. At the time this report was being written, Colonel Díaz was completing course work for his promotion to the rank of general.[85]

"Col. Gabriel Díaz told us that information about paramilitaries were just stories, without proof," one international observer who had interviewed the Twenty-Fourth Brigade commander told Human Rights Watch. "He even told us there was a search going on as we sat in his office, but that they had found nothing."[86]

Human Rights Watch interviewed several observers who recounted how Colonel Díaz had informed them of on-going searches of Villa Sandra that resulted in no evidence of paramilitaries, despite the fact that these same observers had themselves seen paramilitaries at Villa Sandra that day.  Colonel Díaz mounted a similar "show" that was later described in the news weekly Cromos.  The magazine visited the Putumayo in October 2000, during the FARC-EP armed strike.  As the journalists noted, "One doesn't need much military intelligence to corroborate [the paramilitary presence].  On the four occasions that CROMOS passed by, a group of uniformed AUC fighters with their rifles played pool in full view of all travelers."[87]

When the Cromos reporters commented on what they had seen to Colonel Díaz, he said, "This is a topic that NGOs use to blacken the name of the Army." He then showed them a file containing several registries of searches done by the army that had not uncovered evidence of the presence of any armed group.  Yet when the Cromos journalists left the Twenty-Fourth Brigade and again passed Villa Sandra that same day, the armed and uniformed paramilitaries they had seen earlier were still playing pool.[88]

To others interviewed by Human Rights Watch, the relationship between the Twenty-Fourth Brigade and paramilitaries was so clear – and apparently normal – that Colonel Díaz openly flaunted it. According to one observer, who spoke to Human Rights Watch on condition of anonymity, during a December 2000 visit to the Twenty-Fourth Brigade and to Colonel Díaz, this officer calmly pointed out to him a known paramilitary who was walking by the military base, but made no effort to have the paramilitary detained and investigated, as is required by law.[89]

Attorney General Arrest

On December 15, 2000, a special team sent by the Attorney General's Human Rights Unit arrived to carry out arrests of alleged paramilitary members in Puerto Asís. But they met with little success, apprehending only a paramilitary known as "the Russian" (El Russo).[90]

Pilar told Human Rights Watch that Dario, whom she spoke to by telephone after the arrest, told her that "the Russian" was caught because he failed to understand the hand signals made by the police guarding the Puerto Asís airport entrance. "Some of the police were sitting in the 'El Paisa' restaurant in front of the airport, and they were trying to signal him to get lost, there was danger," Pilar said. "He didn't understand."[91]

It could have been worse, Pilar said Dario told her. When prosecutors escorted "the Russian" on a commercial flight out of Puerto Asís, four other paramilitaries were traveling as regular passengers on the same flight, leaving the town until things cooled down and they could then return.[92]

A high ranking government official who helped coordinate the arrest told Human Rights Watch that the operation was considered a partial success even though it net only one paramilitary. "The only reason it had any success at all was because the military was not informed," he said.[93] Investigators also exhumed two bodies from an unmarked gravesite at Villa Sandra. Efforts are being made to identify them.[94]

"We sent a team of CTI agents and Human Rights Unit prosecutors to the Putumayo to make arrests, but there is little we can do if the military is protecting them," a high level government investigator acknowledged to Human Rights Watch. The Technical Investigations Unit (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigaciones, CTI) employs the Attorney General's investigators, and is not authorized to heavily arm them to carry out dangerous operations so must rely on the CNP or military.[95]

Attacks on Indigenous Groups

Among the groups most affected by the paramilitary advance in the Putumayo have been Colombia's indigenous people, who live along the Colombia-Ecuador border. An estimated 35,000 people belonging to the Cofán, Inga, Quechua, and Emberá ethnic groups live in the Putumayo according to indigenous leaders interviewed by Human Rights Watch. Attacks on them have gone virtually unnoticed by the media.[96]

In December 26, 2000, suspected paramilitaries killed Henry Pascal, a Cofán leader. A week later, on January 3, paramilitaries reportedly killed Pablo Emilio Díaz, the director of a Cofán assistance organization known as the ZIO - AI Foundation. Paramilitaries reportedly forced Díaz from his boat and killed him, throwing his body into a river, and told his family that if they recovered the body, they would be killed. Dozens of other Cofans have been forced to flee the area.[97]

Death Threats

The paramilitaries realized early in 2000 that the personero's diligence was causing them a major problem. In July, Martínez told Human Rights Watch, he and the town's mayor were summoned to a slaughterhouse outside town to meet with Rafael, the AUC commander from Cali.  According to Pilar, Rafael worked directly with one of Carlos Castaño's brothers, so was relatively high up in the AUC hierarchy.  Rafael ran the meeting wearing a hood, Martínez remembered.[98]

"'Rafael wanted me to clarify my position on his group, and I replied that it was already quite clear," Martínez told Human Rights Watch. "He also offered me a stipend (sobresueldo). We had a very heated discussion, and he told me I should already be dead.  A couple of days later, Camilo [the AUC military commander] sent me a bottle of whiskey to apologize for Rafael's tone."[99]

Months later, Martínez received another summons from Camilo, ordering him to present himself at Villa Sandra.  He refused, so Camilo came to him, Martínez recalled. "He confirmed that Villa Sandra was their permanent base," Martínez told Human Rights Watch "He asked me to ease off, to let them continue to operate there.  As a sign of good faith, he delivered to me four people who paramilitaries had seized and planned to kill. I refused to work with him, so they left for La Hormiga, where they are now."[100]

Pilar later testified to the personero that Dario had spoken to her of the first meeting in the slaughterhouse. "Dario told me that Rafael had threatened the personero," Pilar told Human Rights Watch.[101] In her declaration to the personero, Pilar noted: "[Dario said] the person who was causing them so many problems was the son of a bitch Personero, that in any case his term was going to end, but it didn't matter, they had to kill (pelar) him anyway because he was causing too much trouble... he didn't know why the personero was still alive, but before he ended his term they were going to kill him."[102]

Pilar also described how Dario had tried to threaten the town council members into choosing a new personero who would tolerate their activity. Whoever did not vote their way, Dario said, "would be declared a military target."[103]

Martínez continued to accept testimonies despite great personal risk. "Through several sources, I was told that the paramilitaries would attempt to kill me before I completed my term on February 28, 2001. Even one of my police bodyguards received this information and documented it in a letter to the local police commander."[104]

Since the Human Rights Watch mission to the Putumayo in January 2001, both the personero and local priest have been forced to leave because of threats from paramilitaries.[105] However, we are not aware of any disciplinary action taken against the Puerto Asís police or the officers in charge of the Twenty-Fourth Brigade for their clear links to paramilitaries.  This is despite unprecedented attention to the region because of the U.S.-backed "push into southern Colombia" to eradicate coca.

Far from moving to clean up the Twenty-Fourth Brigade, the United States and Colombia have made this unit a key part of the eradication efforts carried out in December 2000 and January 2001, described later in the U.S. Policy section of this report.

Residents told Human Rights Watch that on December 20, 2001, the day after U.S. fumigation planes began spraying the Putumayo, paramilitaries used three trucks to enter the village of Puerto Caicedo, about two hours west of Puerto Asís. They also announced their intention to move into the department capital of Mocoa by the end of 2001.

"In just one month, we registered at least fifteen murders in Puerto Caicedo, as a result of the paramilitary advance," said the local priest in Puerto Asís.[106]

One Puerto Caicedo resident told Human Rights Watch that paramilitaries had a chilling message. "The paramilitaries asked around to see who had applauded when guerrillas held a meeting and criticized Plan Colombia," the witness said. "They promised to make these same people applaud to the sound of bullets."[107]

In March 2001, Putumayo-based paramilitaries boasted to visiting journalists that they were spearheading the anti-coca offensive, taking control of areas ahead of the army to prevent guerrillas from shooting at spray planes. "Plan Colombia would be almost impossible without the help of the [paramilitary] self‑defense forces," Commander "Wilson," an AUC member, told the Boston Globe.[108]

One paramilitary sentry "picked through a pack of US Army C‑rations, hunting for chewing gum and pound cake" while the journalist watched. "He shrugged off questions about where he got the supplies, issued to the three Colombian Army antidrug units that have been trained by US Special Forces advisers."[109]

Valle and Cauca (Third Brigade)

The paramilitaries walk around in the middle of the day with their armbands on, and the police and military just let them pass. When official commissions come, they just take off the armbands. For all strangers know, they are soldiers.

-Former Jamundí municipal official

          In "The Ties That Bind," a report that Human Rights Watch published on February 23, 2000, we detailed the record of the Colombian Army's Third Brigade, which government investigators had linked to the formation of paramilitary groups in the department of Valle.

          Colombian government investigators provided us with detailed information showing that in 1999 the Colombian Army's Third Brigade helped set up a  paramilitary group, called the Calima Front. Investigators from the Attorney General's office told Human Rights Watch that they had compiled compelling evidence linking the Calima Front to active duty, retired, and reserve military officers attached to the Third Brigade along with local landowners and hired paramilitaries taken from the ranks of AUC.  According to these government investigators as well as eyewitness testimony obtained by Human Rights Watch, the Third Brigade provided the Calima Front with weapons, intelligence, and logistical support and coordinated actions with them.[110]

During its January 2001 mission to Valle, Human Rights Watch received further information linking the Third Brigade to the formation and deployment of the Calima Front.   Moreover, far from moving decisively to cut these links, punish the officers responsible, and arrest paramilitary leaders, the Colombian government has done little to address this grave problem.

To the contrary, the relationship between the Third Brigade and the AUC, which includes the Calima Front as one of its principal forces, continued through 2000 and resulted in one of the most violent offensives registered in Colombia that year.  During 2000, the AUC claimed to have established four more units in the region: the Farallones Front, the Pacific Front, the Páez Front, and the Southern Liberators Front.  The AUC used these units to carry out its well-publicized plan to

seize the departments of Valle, Cauca, and Nariño and to set up a permanent presence.[111]

"Again and again and again we send early warnings to the government about threats of massacres, but nothing is ever done," one local human rights defender told Human Rights Watch. "Government commissions have come several times, but we never see any result. The massacres are carried out regardless."[112]

The Calima Front

During its January 2001 mission, Human Rights Watch interviewed "Felipe," an adolescent who worked for Third Brigade intelligence when the Calima Front was formed. At the time of our interview, Felipe was in protective custody ordered by the Attorney General's office because of threats to his life.

Felipe told Human Rights Watch that he began working for the Third Brigade when he was fourteen, collecting intelligence on guerrillas in return for money. He also worked for the Palacé Battalion, part of the Third Brigade, and accompanied army units on operations.[113]

"The first meeting I attended that was between paramilitaries and the army was about March of 1999, in the headquarters of the Third Brigade in Cali," Felipe told Human Rights Watch.  "They were gathering together all of the details about the rich people in the area so that they could contribute money to bring the paramilitaries into the region."[114]

Felipe identified two high-ranking Third Brigade officers as among those who attended the meeting.   A man calling himself "Marcos" represented the AUC, Felipe recalled. "Marcos called me a couple of months later and invited me to work with the paramilitaries," Felipe said.[115]

Felipe told Human Rights Watch that he worked with soldiers who spent their vacations moonlighting as paramilitaries to obtain extra cash. "They told me they were paid U.S. $ 500 for one month of work," Felipe said.[116]

Soon after the initial meeting, Felipe said, army units lent support to the paramilitary advance that began in July 1999 near Buga and Tuluá. Officers, he said, coordinated constantly with paramilitaries in the field, using cellular phones and radios.[117]

The Palacé Battalion, part of the Third Brigade, has its headquarters in Buga and is responsible for the region. "I was there when the Palacé Battalion lent one of its pick up trucks to the paramilitaries, who used it on an operation.  But the guerrillas burned it up," Felipe said.[118]

The attack in which the army pick up truck was destroyed took place near the villages of La Moralia and Monteloro.  It is believed to have been among the first carried out by the AUC with Third Brigade coordination and support.  At the time, an AUC leader calling himself "Román" told local journalists that paramilitaries had come "because many people have asked us to be in this area, since they are tired of the attacks by the guerrillas. "[119]

In August, paramilitaries attacked the village of El Placer, near Buga. "Two paramilitary trucks filled with armed fighters passed right through an army roadblock on August 23," one social worker who spoke on condition of anonymity told Human Rights Watch. "Once they were in the village, the paramilitaries killed two people. Others told us that the trucks had actually left the Palacé Battalion right before the killings."[120]

AUC fighters reportedly arrived in El Placer after midnight, forced residents out of their homes, and seized Anacarsis Morantes and Amadeo Valderrama.[121]

Four months earlier, Valderrama had been detained and photographed by Palacé Battalion soldiers, who accused him of helping guerrillas.  According to local aid workers, in early August, both Morantes and Valderrama had fled to Buga after the first paramilitary incursion. After local authorities guaranteed their safety, they returned to their farms.  Government investigators later confirmed that a census taken of the displaced was sent to the mayor's office in order to obtain emergency assistance. The mayor's office then delivered the list to the Palacé Battalion. The names of both Morantes and Valderrama appeared on the list.[122]

Among the paramilitaries residents accused of identifying Morantes and Valderrama was "Tatabro," a former guerrilla-turned-army informant and paramilitary who regularly stayed at the Palacé Battalion and dressed in a camouflage uniform.   Before paramilitaries killed the men, Tatabro reportedly lifted his hood and was identified by residents.[123]

 "Sometimes [soldiers] would put TATABRO at the battalion entrance for road blocks and to help search," another witness told investigators.  "He was the one who said who among them he knew who were passing in cars and who should be searched, they had him there to identify people."[124]

Government witnesses and local residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that the army did nothing to pursue or capture paramilitaries.[125]  Even as Palacé Battalion commander Col. Rafael Hani denied their presence, local police were filing regular and detailed bulletins on the Calima Front's advance. One witness to an emergency meeting hosted by the mayor of Buga and attended by Col. Rafael Hani, Palacé Battalion commander, told government investigators that the officer dismissed reports that there were paramilitaries in the area.  People claiming to be "displaced" by  violence were simply guerrillas, Colonel Hani reportedly said.[126]

Another government witness who worked as an army intelligence agent and had regular contact with paramilitaries told investigators that Colonel Hani was considered by paramilitaries to be among their best allies.  "[Colonel Hani] was the one who helped paramilitaries the most by providing them with food, money, "tiger"-style camouflage uniforms, anything they needed."[127]

For months afterwards, residents told us, paramilitaries were permanently based in the region. "In the center of Valle, a lot is known about the paramilitaries, but the operations aren't carried out to capture them," said a high level government investigator.[128]

Investigators identified several permanent paramilitary bases in the region, among them one located on the "La Iberia" farm near Tuluá.  After a visit to the region, the Office of the UNHCHR reported that it had informed the government on March 24, 2000 of the existence of this base.   Nevertheless, neither the army nor police took any action against it and the base remained in place throughout 2000.[129]

Road to Buenaventura

After establishing itself in central Valle, the AUC began to push south and west, targeting the road connecting the city of Cali to Colombia's main port of Buenaventura. Residents point to the May 11, 2000 massacre that took place near Sabaletas, Valle, as the starting point of a paramilitary offensive. There, residents told a government investigative mission, at least eighty heavily armed and uniformed men killed twelve residents and abducted five others.[130]

Previously, residents told the UNHCHR mission, members of the security forces had told them that they would send whoever did not help them catch guerrillas "to the paramilitaries."[131] 

The UNHCHR mission noted that residents and local authorities repeatedly expressed outrage at the ease with which the AUC had moved through an area that had long had a pronounced, permanent military and police presence:

There is surprise at the ease with which the armed group that killed and forcibly disappeared so many people in the same trip could complete its entire criminal itinerary without being seen by the Army in any one of its roadblocks along the roads, particularly in the hamlet of Zacarías, located ten minutes outside Sabaletas and El Danubio where there is a permanent military base along with the guard station located along the highway at the entrance to the Alto Anchicayá Electrical Plant. There is also a great deal of surprise expressed by eyewitnesses by the sheer quantity of uniformed fighters who carried out the incursion (close to eighty well armed and uniformed fighters using uniforms reserved for the exclusive use of the military forces who traveled in two pick up trucks and two trucks -- some of them the red wine color that was recognized by some community residents as the same as vehicles belonging to the Army that passed here six months earlier -- when the region has only one entrance (Sabaletas) and one exit (Queremal), both guarded by the security forces).[132]

Especially hard hit were the region's African Colombian communities, who comprise an estimated 20 percent of Colombia's population and are concentrated along the Pacific Coast. Since Colombia's 1991 constitution recognized the right of ethnic communities in Colombia to organize, African Colombians have been mobilizing politically to press for land and other rights. "That means we are considered obstacles by both guerrillas and paramilitaries, who want to control black communities," one organizer told Human Rights Watch. "The paramilitaries are the main threats now."[133]

The story Jorge Isaac Aramburo, an African Colombian teacher and organizer, told Human Rights Watch was especially dramatic.  A resident of Buenaventura, Valle, Aramburo learned in September 2000 that his name was on a list of suspected guerrilla supporters being circulated by paramilitaries.   Before leaving town for his safety on September 6, 2000, he stopped by a widowed sister's house to leave grocery money.[134][PHOTO 6]

Later, he realized paramilitaries had seen him enter the house, but failed to note that he left out the back door. After he departed, armed men broke into the house and murdered five of Aramburo's nephews.   Also killed was a friend who had been visiting, the cousin of one of Colombia's leading soccer players.[135] Witnesses told local journalists the killers had lined the men up against the wall and executed them one by one.[136]

As European Parliament members noted in a letter to President Pastrana in May 2001, despite a series of massacres and alerts about other planned massacres, the paramilitary presence not only continued but grew at year's end, despite the permanent presence of the Navy in Buenaventura.[137]

The Cauca Offensive

The AUC publicly announced a plan to push south into the department of Cauca in February 2000.   In a letter to local mayors and copied to the governor, the AUC's leaders said they would move fighters from Valle and wrest control from guerrillas. "Any citizen or civil authority who gives any type of assistance to subversives after our arrival in the department of Cauca will be declared a military target" the letter warned.[138]

In May 11, 2000, the AUC repeated its threats, this time to Cauca's governor, César Negret Mosquera:

Just as we have publicly announced, the AUC has arrived in the department of Cauca with a fighting unit called the CALIMA front. Yesterday, we attacked several villages outside Buenaventura in the department of Valle, and in other hamlets that belong to Cauca, and we killed fourteen FARC guerrillas in combat and executed twelve guerrillas dressed in civilian clothes. You, governor, represent the department's highest authority and you are shamelessly strengthening guerrillas in Cauca department.[139]

Repeatedly, Cauca residents told Human Rights Watch, Colombian Army troops carried out operations that were followed closely by the arrival of large numbers of paramilitaries.   Outside Timba, Cauca, one witness told Human Rights Watch, a June 2000 army offensive was followed within hours by the arrival of AUC paramilitaries, who drove up even as military helicopters continued to overfly the area and the ruts of the army's Cascabel armored vehicles were still fresh.[140]

"When guerrillas attack, the Army responds in less than two hours," said one Cauca personero from the region, who asked that his name and town not be used. "But despite killings every three or four days, there was never a response by the Army against the paramilitaries.   I can't think of a single clash between them."[141]

In another instance, this personero told Human Rights Watch, the AUC engaged in combat with a UC-ELN guerrilla unit, and within an hour the Army arrived to join the attack on guerrillas.[142] 

The personero also told Human Rights Watch that residents reported to him that they had seen the commander of the Pichincha Battalion conversing with "Pirri," an AUC commander, about where displaced families should be housed. "But people were too afraid to make formal declarations," he noted.   After learning that his name was reportedly on a paramilitary death list, this personero resigned and fled to Bogotá.[143]

Other Timba residents told local social workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch that they had seen army soldiers and paramilitaries actually exchanging uniforms, so that soldiers appeared by day as army members and by night as paramilitaries.[144]

Christmas marked the arrival in La Esperanza, Cauca, of armed men identifying themselves as members of the AUC. Approximately 200 residents fled to nearby Timba, where they took shelter in the local school.  The AUC reportedly ordered families to abandon their homes and, once massacres were carried out, return with their safety "guaranteed."[145]

In nearby Jamundí, one municipal official who has since fled the area, told Human Rights Watch that paramilitaries and the army regularly met in the Plazas, a local hotel.  "The paramilitaries walk around in the middle of the day with their armbands on, and the police and military just let them pass. When official commissions come, they just take off the armbands. For all strangers know, they are soldiers."[146]

Enrique's Search

When "Enrique," who asked that Human Rights Watch protect his anonymity, heard from family members that his aunt had vanished in Santander de Quilichao,

he took the first flight from Bogotá to Cali, then a bus to the town, to begin a search. His aunt had reportedly been seized by paramilitaries on a Sunday morning.[147]

Though the CNP maintains a post in town, locals warned Enrique that paramilitaries patrolled the streets at night with police permission.[148] "We have cases where the paramilitaries have murdered people within the town of Santander de Quilichao, and even then the police do nothing," one high level government investigator told Human Rights Watch.[149]

"The paramilitaries said they would let my aunt go, and that I should just wait," Enrique told Human Rights Watch. He found the paramilitary base just fifteen minutes from the town's center. Meanwhile, dozens of soldiers patrolled the streets. "Later they told us to go look in the Cauca River. We found her tortured and dead. We could identify the body because of a ring and a mole on her skin. Her fingers were broken completely back. They had shot her through one eye, and it was missing."[150]

Cali residents told Human Rights Watch that three to four bodies a week float by on the Cauca River, which separates central Cali from the international airport and is spanned by the bridge that most airline travelers use to enter or leave the facilities. Fishermen and Colombians who gather sand from the river bed to sell are often the ones to find cadavers and body parts.[151] Sometimes as many as ten bodies are found together, hands bound, and shot several times.[152]

Terror in Cajibío

The terror caused by the paramilitary advance on Cauca cannot be overstated. When the AUC arrived at dawn in a hamlet near Cajibío, Cauca, on November 22, 2000, Ana Zoraida Campo was in her house with her family. Paramilitaries demanded that her husband appear, but he was not home.  Campo was too afraid to open the door. They beat it down and seized her brother, Arsenio, saying that he would remain a hostage until her brother appeared. Days later, she told the personero inPopayán, Cauca's capital:

They forced us into the town square where most of the townspeople were, and when I arrived I saw my younger brother Yonir Campo who was also bound, then they divided us into two groups of men and women, and they made the men line up, and then they went down searching them and demanding their identification papers. Then they called the owners of the stores, among them my elder brother Alcibiadez Camayo and my nephew James Camayo, and they were bound as well... from there they said they wanted the woman who did not want to open her door, so I raised my hand and I said I was the one, and they grabbed me and bound me and they said that all of us there, were twelve in all, that they would kill us.

Eventually paramilitaries released eight of the hostages, including Campo and her brothers. Four villagers were then taken to the road leading to the cemetery and executed.[153]

The same paramilitary unit continued detaining people until November 24, residents later testified.  That day, they arrived at the village of La Pedregosa leading five men tied together by the neck and with their hands bound. The paramilitaries severed the village's telephone lines and set up a roadblock to prevent anyone from leaving and to search anyone arriving.  After parading the five hostages through town, the paramilitaries reportedly executed them in the local church even as a Colombian military helicopter flew over its bell tower. At the time, a local priest was celebrating a first communion, and guests watched stunned as the execution took place as they left the church.[154]

Residents also reported to the Internal Affairs agency that the paramilitaries spoke to the helicopter's crew via radio and that the helicopter left the area without doing anything to attack the paramilitaries.[155]

Local authorities held an emergency security meeting in Popayán on November 22, and called on the security forces to take action to stop the killing. During the meeting, the mayor of Morales reported that the AUC had already threatened him and four other candidates for the mayor's office.[156]  A month earlier, the AUC had circulated a flyer announcing a "social cleansing" of the candidates and their supporters, who the AUC claimed favored guerrillas.[157]

          But when government forces finally appeared, their arrival did not calm fears, but increased them. According to a Cauca-based association of human rights groups, troops belonging to the Third Brigade's "José Hilario López" battalion, based in Popayán, arrived in villages outside Cajibío on December 12, 2000, less than a month after the AUC had carried out its first killings.  But instead of pursuing paramilitaries, residents alleged that soldiers began detaining local people.  Soldiers reportedly stripped three young men who were on their way to harvest coffee and beat them.  Other soldiers fired shots into the ground by the feet of a local leader and near his ears, saying that they wanted to "make him talk."

Before leaving, they reportedly threatened the villagers by saying, "Just wait, because for Christmas we are going to squeeze your balls and ruin the holidays."[158]

Soldiers made a delayed payment on that threat on January 10, 2001, when they arrived at the home of Edelmira Montenegro