Reply #20: Guardian story, released later...

[Judi Lynn]

U.S. Soldiers Detained in Colombia Plot

Thursday May 5, 2005 2:16 AM

By KIM HOUSEGO

Associated Press Writer
CARMEN DE APICALA, Colombia (AP) -

......National Police chief Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro said officers stopped a suspicious man in the area, who offered a bribe to be allowed to go free. Under threat of arrest, the man led the officers to a nearby house where more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition for assault rifles, machine guns and pistols were found, officials said.
(snip)

It marks the latest U.S. embarrassment in this South American nation. On March 29, five U.S. soldiers were arrested after 35 pounds of cocaine was found aboard a U.S. military plane that flew to El Paso, Texas, from the Apiay air base east of Bogota.

In the ammunitions case, a police registry identified the U.S. servicemen only as Allam Norman Tanquary and Jesus Hernandez. It was unclear whether Allam was a misspelling. U.S. authorities did not provide names.

The Colombian attorney general's office said the arrested American soldiers had been in contact with a former Colombian police sergeant, Will Gabriel Aguilar, who has been linked to paramilitary groups. Aguilar, another retired policeman and two other Colombians were also arrested, the police official said.

The cache was composed of more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition sent to Colombia by the United States under its Plan Colombia aid program, aimed at crushing a leftist insurgency and the drug trafficking that fuels it, officials said.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4983382,00.html