DynCorp: Beyond the Rule of Law
Despite the fact that a company contracted
by the US government to carry out its program of fumigating and
eradicating coca crops in Colombia has been caught smuggling heroin
out of the country, no attempts have been made to bring it to justice.
For more than a year the Office of Prosecutions has failed to render
a decision on the case, while the police official responsible for
setting the whole process in motion has since retired from active
duty. This is not the first time a case against DynCorp employees
has disappeared in the labyrinth known as Colombia's judicial system.
On May 12, 2000, according to an official
US Drug Enforcement Administration document obtained by The Nation
magazine under the Freedom of Information Act, Colombian police
intercepted a parcel sent from DynCorp's Colombia offices to its
air base in Florida.
Colombian authorities discovered two small
bottles of a thick liquid in a package which, when tested, was found
to be laced with heroin worth more than $100,000. When authorities
discovered the name of the company responsible for shipping the
heroin they turned the results of the 'narcotest' over to the Immediate
Reaction Unit, which then set into motion prosecution procedure
483064. However, the heroin bust remained a secret for more than
a year until The Nation began its investigation and now it seems
the evidence has simply disappeared.
Apparently, a similar situation occurred
last year when 29-year-old Michael Demons, a paramedic member of
DynCorp's team, suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to a hospital
in Florencia, in southeastern Colombia, where he died. Forensic
tests conducted at the time revealed that the cause of death was
a cocaine overdose. Mysteriously, when the Colombian Central Office
of Prosecutions took an interest in the death and requested more
information, all related documents, such as the legal medical reports,
vanished.
And two years ago, the records of ten DynCorp
employees involved in the illicit trade of amphetamines also disappeared.
"Faced with evidence of the scandal, DynCorp decided to expel
these employees from the country and so drop the heat on the issue,"
a government investigator told Colombia's Semana magazine.
These discoveries might only be the tip
of the iceberg as DynCorp's activities are conducted in absolute
secrecy and appear to be beyond the jurisdiction of any governmental
body. A high ranking police official in Colombia, who has known
about DynCorp since their 1993 arrival in Colombia, told Semana
magazine, "no authority, whether the Civil Aviation Authority,
police or army, is authorized to search DynCorp's planes. Nobody
knows what they carry on their return to the United States because
they are untouchable."
Some Colombian officials who disagree with
DynCorp's involvement in Colombia believe the pilots of the company
are nothing more than mercenaries who travel around the world offering
their services. According to another high-ranking police official
who did not wish to disclose his name, "They are very difficult
people to deal with. Most of them consume large amounts of drugs.
Many inject before flying. Several officials have had open confrontations
with these pilots because they don't respect the disciplines of
military bases. And our officials don't accept that these people,
no matter how experienced they are in the field of war, consume
drugs on military grounds" .
According to the Guardian Weekly, the US
government's contract with DynCorp is full of ambiguities, giving
the company even more leeway to avoid oversight by both Colombian
and US authorities. This not only increases the opportunities for
DynCorp employees to personally profit from drug-trafficking, but
also enables the company to conduct counter-insurgency operations
for the US government that go far beyond their official role of
assessing and implementing the fumigation of illicit crops.
The lack of transparency with regards to
DynCorp's role in Colombia has led Human Rights Watch to accuse
the Pentagon of using companies like DynCorp to violate conditions
demanded by the United Stated Congress when it approved Plan Colombia.
The US aid package allows for a maximum of 500 troops and 300 civilian
contractors in Colombia at any given time. But according to Human
Rights Watch, the policy of subcontracting the war has resulted
in some 1,000 professionals with links to the United States working
in Colombia, many of whom have retired from US Special Forces and
are now employed by private companies like DynCorp.
Consequently, Washington is sitting pretty.
It may secretly approve of and encourage counter-insurgency operations
conducted by DynCorp, but it doesn't have to take responsibility
for them. Clearly, serious questions need to be answered regarding
the role of both the US government and DynCorp in Plan Colombia
and why personnel from DynCorp are being implicated in drugtrafficking.
The fact that nothing has been done to bring
DynCorp employees to justice implies a high level of corruption
and complicity with regards to these crimes. It also raises the
question as to why a poor Colombian drug smuggling mule should be
sentenced to many years in prison while highly paid US mercenaries
remain 'untouchable'.
Robert Lawson
English Ecologists in support of Campesinos of Colombia
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