U.S. INDICTS COLOMBIAN REBEL GROUP

WASHINGTON -- A federal grand jury, striking a blow against a terrorist
threat outside the Arab world, indicted a Colombian rebel group and six of
its members Tuesday on charges of murdering three Americans.

The indictment, returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in
Washington, accused the FARC organization and the individuals of murder,
conspiracy to commit murder, using a firearm during a crime of violence and
aiding and abetting.

The charges stem from the 1999 slayings of three American citizens who were
kidnapped while working with Indians in northeastern Colombia. Those slain
were Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok, and Lahee'Enae Gay.

The grand jury said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
and its members considered U.S. citizens to be military advisers and thus
legitimate military targets.

The indictment also said FARC members kidnapped the three Americans on Feb.
25, 1999, and murdered them on March 4.

"These three workers went to Colombia to do good but instead met with great
evil," Attorney General John Ashcroft said. "Today's action is a step
toward ridding our hemisphere of the narcoterrorism that threatens our
lives, our freedom and our human dignity."

The six individuals were identified in the indictment as German Briceno
Suarez; El Marrano, also known as Fernando; Jeronimo; Gustavo Bocota
Aguablanca; Nelson Vargas Rueda; and Dumar. Only single names were provided
for Jeronimo and Dumar.

"Just as we fight terrorism in the mountains of south Asia, we will fight
terrorism in our own hemisphere," Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft has increasingly sought to use U.S. anti-terrorism efforts against
the world's largest drug traffickers as another way to stem the flow of
cash and weapons to terrorists.

Ashcroft has said previously that members of FARC, have killed 13 Americans
since 1980 and kidnapped more than a hundred others, including three U.S.
missionaries in 1993 who are believed to have been killed.

FARC frequently has been implicated in cocaine drug running that affects
the United States, U.S. officials have said.

The rebel group is estimated to have 17,000 members and is one of three
main rebel groups involved in Colombia's long strife.

Last month, Ashcroft announced the indictment on cocaine charges of three
FARC members who conspired to deliver plane loads of cocaine into the
United States from 1994 until February 2001.

The three included Tomas Molina Caracas, whom the government said commands
FARC's 16th Front, which operates in eastern Colombia and controlled a key
airstrip near Barranco Minas essential for carrying processed cocaine out
of the rural region. Caracas is known in the region as "El Negro Acacio."

The others were identified as FARC members were Carlos Bolas and a man
known to the government only as "Oscar El Negro."