A cashiered army lieutenant colonel and 14 soldiers were convicted on Monday of murdering 10 elite counternarcotics police agents in an ambush that showed how deeply drug corruption threatens Colombia's security forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Byron Carvajal and his soldiers face prison terms of up to 60 years. Prosecutors want Judge Edmundo Lopez to impose the maximum.
The convictions came despite numerous attempts to subvert the trial, including a prosecutor's offer to help the defense in exchange for more than US$400,000, senior police officials and prosecutors familiar with the case said.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing investigations, said the bribe was never paid and the prosecutor who sought it had been removed from the case before he made the offer.
Carvajal was convicted of ordering the May 22, 2006, ambush in the town of Jamundi, where an informant told police they would find at least 100kg of cocaine at a rural psychiatric center. When police pulled up, the soldiers cut them down with 420 bullets and seven grenades. No drugs were found.
Carvajal, who was not at the scene, said his soldiers believed they were surprising leftist rebels. The other defendants refused to testify to avoid incriminating themselves.
The judge, hearing the case in this western city near Jamundi, determined that Carvajal had planned the killings.
"I hope they rot in jail," said Alvaro Garcia, an uncle of slain drug agent Roosevelt Garcia, after the verdict.
Defense attorney Eugenio Vergara said the defendants would appeal after sentencing, which Lopez set for April 21.
Speaking after the verdict, Carvajal claimed innocence.
"This father of four children who you have just declared responsible had no motive whatsoever to order the murder of these agents," he said.
He and another defendant described themselves as wronged patriots.
"I've fought so that all you people here today can be free," former Lieutenant Harrison Castro told the court. "I and the 14 others here, including Colonel Byron, would have preferred dying in combat with rebels to dying here unjustly."
Prosecutors didn't present evidence about suspected motives. Top army officials initially called it tragic "friendly fire." Senior police officials said they believe the soldiers were protecting a major drug trafficker.
One thing is clear, chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran said: "It was a massacre related to organized criminals."
While witnesses linked Carvajal to Wilson Figueroa, a drug trafficker captured last year in Cali, those ties were not explained.
Mafias have long infiltrated Colombia's security forces -- back to the days of the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar. A retired army general and cashiered navy admiral are among those currently under investigation for allegedly aiding drug lords. But soldiers have rarely killed their colleagues in the service of drug mafias.
The slain agents, some of whom trained in the US, belonged to the most elite unit of Colombia's judicial investigative police, working closely with DEA agents to seize cocaine and arrest traffickers, said Colonel Nicolas Munoz, the agency's deputy director.
Most died of shots to the head, neck and chest. In the midst of the fusillade, some managed distress calls.
Police got off just 30 shots. Not a single soldier was wounded.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS