Colombian Leader Admits State Atrocity

BOGOTA, Colombia —  President Ernesto Samper has startled the military and won praise from human rights groups by personally admitting the state’s guilt in one of the most brutal episodes in Colombian history--the mutilation and slaughter of 107 peasants.

In an emotional ceremony Tuesday at the presidential palace to which families of the victims were invited, Samper accepted the state’s responsibility for the massacres in the southwestern town of Trujillo between 1988 and 1990.

The massacres, in which peasants were dragged from their homes, tortured, burned with blowtorches, cut up with chain saws and dumped in a river, were among the worst in the bloody, recent history of Colombia and caused international outrage.

No one has been found guilty of the crimes, which rights groups say were carried out at the request of drug traffickers by paramilitary groups with police and army complicity.

Samper’s remarks were reinforced Wednesday when the government said the army officer allegedly at the center of the killings, Lt. Col. Alirio Antonio Uruena, is to be retired from active service.