Four soldiers serving on anti-narcotics missions in Colombia are being held on charges of drug trafficking after the discovery of 15kg of cocaine on a military aircraft.
Four US soldiers serving on anti-narcotics missions in Colombia are being held on charges of drug trafficking after the discovery of 15kg of cocaine on a military aircraft.
The four, who have not been identified, were arrested at the end of last month when their plane landed in Texas after taking off from southern Colombia. A fifth man was released.
Colombian authorities are investigating to see if other members of the US or Colombian military were involved.
William Wood, the US ambassador in Bogota, said the four would not be extradited even if it was proved they had committed crimes on Colombian soil. He said a three-decade old agreement gave immunity to US soldiers serving in Colombia, but stressed: "We do not tolerate corruption."
The news that the soldiers cannot be extradited to Colombia, which has sent over 200 nationals to stand trial in the US in the last three years, provoked an uproar in congress.
"This agreement must be changed," said Senator Jairo Clopatofsky, of the foreign relations committee. "It's completely unjust that we are sending Colombians abroad to stand trial and we can't request anyone be sent here."
With its four-decade civil war and huge drugs industry, Washington views Colombia as the southern front in the "war on terror" and the battlefield for the "war on drugs."
Colombia plants an estimated 70 percent of the world's coca. The US, the single largest consumer of cocaine, has provided over US$3 billion in aid since 2000. President Alvaro Uribe remains the darling of Washington with his hard line against the Marxist guerrillas and the drugs industry.
While some Colombians see harsh US prisons as the only way to stop drug lords running their businesses from their jail cells, many see extradition as an affront and insist that crimes committed in Colombia must be judged and paid for in the same country.
The arrests are the second setback on the frontline of the war on drugs in as many weeks. Last month it was revealed that in spite of record fumigations across Colombia in 2004 the estimated land given over to planting coca remained unchanged at 114,000 hectares.
Aerial fumigations, the principal weapon in disrupting coca growing, remain controversial. While the US and Colombian governments insist fumigations are safe, peasants living in heavily fumigated zones complain of a host of problems ranging from the destruction of legal crops to skin rashes and birth defects.
The four soldiers are among about 1,000 US military and private contractors working in Colombia, providing training, supplying intelligence and helping run fumigation missions. The case has shown once again how cocaine and its billions can corrupt.
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