Deaths raise intrigue along Venezuela-Colombia border

SANTA BARBARA, Venezuela -- A whodunit involving two undercover Colombian soldiers whose bodies were found here in western Venezuela has heightened tensions between the neighboring countries and lifted the lid on the dirty little secrets of their border relations.

At first, the unidentified and decomposed corpses found near the city dump in late April were thought to be victims of the drug trade. As much as one-third of the cocaine produced by Colombia is shipped through the region, and turf wars are constant.

Next, officials pegged robbery as the motive, after Colombian family members came forward to claim the bodies and said the victims were traveling salesmen.

Then, the bombshell: Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that the two, Captain Camilo Gonzalez and Sergeant Gregorio Martinez, were undercover agents of the Colombian Army. They had been found out by leftist Colombian rebels operating in Venezuela, who captured, tortured, and killed them, he charged in a radio interview last month.

Further inflaming matters, the Colombian magazine Semana, citing Venezuelan sources, asserted that the two Colombians had been detained at a Venezuelan National Guard installation in Santa Barbara shortly before they were killed. One of the victims managed to place a cellphone call to a family member to say he was in Venezuelan custody and that the Colombian government should be alerted, a source close to the investigation said.

"It raises the issue of whether the Venezuelan armed forces were facilitators or even participants in the murders," said the source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case.

In an interview in Bogota, the Colombian capital, President Alvaro Uribe declined to comment on the case, saying it was "under investigation by both countries."

Murky circumstances aside, the case has shed light on Colombia's extensive spy network and what critics of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez call Venezuela's permissive attitude toward rebel groups in its territory. It also poses questions of whether Venezuelan armed forces offer more than passive support in their dealings with Colombian rebels.

Santos, whose office did not respond to requests for an interview about the case, acknowledged in the same radio interview that Colombia had "lots of people" who had infiltrated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish initials FARC.

The Colombian government views the spies as a necessary weapon, especially in Venezuela, where Chávez is trying to remold his country as a socialist state.

Chávez has made no secret of his opposition to Plan Colombia, the US-financed war on drugs and terrorism. Chávez blames the program for pushing combatants on both sides of Colombia's civil war into his territory.

In an interview late last month in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, General Alberto Rojas Muller, a Chávez security adviser, said his government had "no data linking our armed forces to either of the two officers. Officially, at least, we know nothing about that. . . . I imagine the guerrillas killed them."

Muller attacked Santos as someone determined to portray Venezuela as a "rogue state." But he also acknowledged that the FARC and another Colombian rebel group, the National Liberation Army, known as ELN, routinely used Venezuela as a haven.

Stopping them is "not our job," he said. "We don't have to incur expenses to contain an enemy that is not our enemy. That's their job," Muller said, referring to the Colombian government.

Muller asserted that Colombian rebels in Venezuela "behave themselves. They don't want to cause problems. It is the paramilitaries who are at the root of any public disorder," a reference to right-wing Colombian paramilitary groups that he said crossed over into Venezuela.

In his "Alo Presidente" weekly radio show last week, Chávez acknowledged that the presence of Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela was an issue, saying he was aware local officials in Apure state had made "contact" with rebels. He forbade Venezuelan officials from doing so, saying he would apply the "the full weight of the law" against those who did.

Although relations between Uribe and Chávez are cordial on the surface, binational tensions are evident elsewhere.

Last month, former Venezuelan vice president Jose Vicente Rangel claimed that Santos was behind a plot against Chávez and that the two dead soldiers were on a mission to destabilize Venezuela. The Colombian government dismissed the charges as absurd.

Despite Chávez's statements last week, officials here who oppose the Venezuelan president see a political agenda in the armed forces' lax attitude toward the presence of armed Colombian rebels.

Here in the border state of Zulia, where 13 of 21 municipalities are led by opposition mayors, there has been a breakdown of cooperation between public security forces and local governments led by Chávez opponents.

"We have to defend ourselves, because there has been an institutional rupture," said Alfonso Marquez, the anti-Chávez mayor of Machiques, a cattle town about 120 miles north of Santa Barbara.