
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 8, 1995                   TAG: 9502080066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PANEL STUDIES KILLINGS

The Colombian government's willingness to take responsibility for a massacre in which victims were tortured and cut up with chain saws brought praise Tuesday and a call from human-rights advocates for further investigation.

The Organization of American States' independent human-rights commission heard victims' representatives, human-rights groups and government witnesses at a closed-door hearing on the killings of 107 people from 1988 to 1991.

A statement being drafted by the commission will say it is in full agreement with steps taken by Colombian President Ernesto Samper, elected in August, to investigate the killings in Trujillo, said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch Americas.

Vivanco said the OAS group also will call for further investigation and prosecution.

He said justice needs to be pursued, including prosecution, payment of moral reparations and compensation to victims, public apologies and punishment of the perpetrators.

``We still need to see whether the government will be able to produce concrete results,'' he said, noting that its commission so far has uncovered details on only 34 of the 107 killings.

Last week, the Colombian government acknowledged that police, judges and soldiers allowed right-wing paramilitary groups to commit the murders and that some soldiers participated. The victims included men, women and children accused of supporting or being members of left-wing guerrilla groups.

The OAS commission's hearing was part of its annual review of human-rights violations in the Western Hemisphere. The results are to presented to OAS foreign ministers this summer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

First word in Bogota of the massacres came in April 1990, when a man from Trujillo, Daniel Arcila, traveled 160 miles to the capital with a tale of torture and chain-saw killings.

Authorities sent Arcila to a psychiatrist. He was judged a paranoid psychopath and his claims dismissed. A year later, Arcila was arrested by security forces and he hasn't been heard from since.

The government commission report on the killings slams Colombia's judicial system. It recommends that the judge and psychiatrist who dealt with Arcila be investigated, and that the accused killers be prosecuted.

Arcila's testimony about water torture and beheadings - discarded as rubbish by prosecutors after they heard the psychiatrist's evaluation - were reprinted Monday in Semana magazine.

by CNB