Drug mafia's infiltration of military grows clearer

The killing of 10 Colombian policemen by army soldiers illustrates the depths to which the drug mafia may have penetrated the military.

BOGOTA - It was a set of killings like few others in Colombia's long and violent history.

Many of the 11 dead were members of an elite police unit raiding a drug lord's lair. The shooters were army soldiers allegedly on the payroll of the accused trafficker, Diego Montoya, who is next to Osama Bin Laden on the FBI's most wanted list.

The military called it a ''friendly fire'' incident. But the attorney general said it was a ''massacre,'' and when a military tribunal tried to handle the case, his office took over the case in a rare show of legal muscle.

Indeed, the scandal surrounding the death of 10 members of the judicial police -- known as DIJIN, its Spanish acronym -- and an informant in early June has not just damaged the reputation of the army and the government, but raised questions over traffickers' infiltration of the government at a time when Colombia is seeking continued U.S. aid for the fight against illicit drugs.