Friday, June 15, 2001
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/06/15/MN219178.DTL
Bogota -- Three American civilian
airmen providing airborne security for a
U.S. oil company coordinated an
anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998,
marking targets and directing helicopter
gunships that mistakenly killed 18
civilians, Colombian military pilots have
alleged in a official inquiry.
The air attack on the village of Santo
Domingo in oil-rich northeast Arauca
province took place on Dec. 13 of that
year amid efforts to hunt down a 200-
strong column of the leftist Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Survivors said the aircraft attacked them
as they ran out of their homes to a nearby
road with their hands in the air to show
they were noncombatants.
The raid caused some of the worst
"collateral damage" inflicted on civilians
by the armed forces in the recent history
of Colombia's 37-year conflict. Shortly
after the incident, President Andres
Pastrana criticized the military's actions,
saying that security forces "cannot
respond to barbarism with barbarism."
The alleged role of the U.S. airmen --
emerging only now -- has raised fresh
questions about American involvement in
a war that is increasingly being
outsourced to private companies not
accountable to the U.S. Congress.
According to the State Department,
about 300 U.S. civilians are in Colombia,
most of whom work on contracts
ostensibly linked to anti-drug efforts,
which Washington has funded with more
than $1 billion as part of the Pastrana
government's "Plan Colombia." Some
have even piloted helicopters in raids on
drug plantations and installations in
southern Colombia.
The pilots in the Santo Domingo incident
were providing security for Los
Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum
Corp., which operates the nearby Cano
Limon oil field, Colombia's second
largest.
Investigators at the Colombian
prosecutor general's office have asked
the U. S. Embassy in Bogota to help
obtain information from the American
airmen involved in the attack, who
worked for a private Rockledge,
Fla.-based air surveillance contractor
called AirScan International Inc.
Embassy officials issued a terse statement
Wednesday saying that the airmen were
not contract employees of the U.S.
government and that the embassy did not
help oil companies solve their security
issues.
Although it occurred 2 1/2 years ago, the
Santo Domingo attack is becoming a
cause celebre for human rights
organizations protesting creeping U.S.
involvement in Colombia's guerrilla war.
They say the fact that U.S.-donated
helicopters dropped cluster bombs and
rockets on Santo Domingo is a disturbing
demonstration of how the Colombian
military has sometimes used U.S. aid that
in theory is earmarked only for anti-
narcotics operations.
"Here is an example of how U.S. aid is
involved in human rights abuses," said
Robin Kirk, senior researcher for the
New York-based group Human Rights
Watch.
"This is really the first test case of how
the U.S. government is going to abide by
its own human rights laws," Kirk said,
referring to the so-called Leahy Law that
restricts U.S. aid from being spent on
counterinsurgency operations.
Colombian Air Force pilot Cesar
Romero told military judge Capt. Luz
Monica Ostos in testimony last month
about the Santo Domingo attack: "The
coordination was done directly with the
armored helicopters that were supporting
us and with the (Cessna 337) Skymaster
plane flown by U.S. pilots. The
Skymaster and gunship crews talked
directly to the ground troops."
While Romero conceded that the
U.S.-donated Vietnam-era Huey UH-1H
helicopter he piloted bombed a target
marked by the Cessna, he said he had no
intention of causing civilian casualties.
If Romero and Jimenez are eventually
accused of criminal action in the deaths of
innocent civilians, they could face up to
30 years in jail. It is unlikely that the U.S.
airmen will face any charges, analysts
say.
The raid came a day after army
intelligence sources and the Skymaster
plane detected rebel movements in the
area.
Air force helicopters strafed Santo
Domingo with machine-gun fire, air-to-
surface rockets and cluster bombs.
Eighteen civilians were killed, including
nine children, but no guerrillas.
At the time, the Colombian armed forces
and U.S. officials conceded that the
aircraft and almost all weaponry involved
in the attack had been supplied under a
1989 U.S. aid package that was exempt
from current congressional restrictions.
An inquiry was launched immediately
after the incident, but final results have
been delayed by military and civilian
courts arguing over jurisdiction.
In testimony to the military tribunal late
last month, helicopter co-pilot Lt. Johan
Jimenez backed Romero's accounts of
the role of the AirScan spotter plane.
"The Skymaster pilot chose the places for
troop disembarkment, pinpointed
vulnerable areas and pointed out guerrilla
presence," Jimenez said in an official
transcript shown to The Chronicle.
"The (Colombian) Blackhawk
(helicopter) and Skymaster pilots are the
ones that helped the pilot of our Huey
UH-1H to identify the target with visual
aid from the ground," added Jimenez.
The Colombian pilots said the Skymaster
-- equipped with infra-red sensors and
high-resolution cameras -- was
contracted by Occidental. Since 1997,
the plane has constantly patrolled over
the 120,000 barrel-a-day Cano Limon
field and along the length of the 500-mile
pipeline that pumps crude to the
Caribbean coast.
Oil infrastructure is regularly sabotaged
by the FARC and the small National
Liberation Army (ELN), which accuse
multinationals of plundering the country's
natural resources.
Juan Carlos Ucros, Occidental's legal
representative in Bogota, said the
company had "no contractual links with
the pilots or the plane" at the time of the
attack.
But a senior official for the Colombian
state oil company Ecopetrol, which has a
stake in the Cano Limon field, said
yesterday that Occidental had always
funded the Skymaster plane but had
switched from paying AirScan directly to
channeling payments through the
Colombian Defense Ministry.
"I have confirmed that the plane is paid
for by Occidental although the contract
has been held at various stages by either
the Occidental-Ecopetrol partnership or
by the Defense Ministry," said the official,
who requested anonymity.
AirScan director John Manser, speaking
from company headquarters, said the
Skymaster plane and crew were
originally contracted to Occidental and
Ecopetrol in 1997. The company then
trained Colombian crews and eventually
leased and later sold the spotter plane to
the Colombian air force.
Manser confirmed that the three U.S.
airmen named in the Colombian
investigation -- Joe Orta, Charlie Denny
and Dan MacClintock -- had worked for
AirScan in Colombia but had since left
the company. He declined to say whether
the men, like most of the company's
employees, were former U.S.
servicemen.
Air Force chief Gen. Hector Fabio
Velasco has declined to comment about
the allegations but told reporters briefly
that there may have been U.S. "trainers"
aboard the spotter plane piloted by
Colombians.