By TIM JOHNSON
             Herald Staff Writer

             BOGOTA, Colombia -- Leftist insurgents gave no sign Saturday that they would
             take responsibility for the execution of three Americans who were kidnapped
             while helping an Indian group in northeastern Colombia -- much less hand over the
             rebel gunmen allegedly involved.

             Condemnation rained on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
             the group suspected of killing the activists in cold blood.

             The rebels suffer from a ``sickly tendency toward death,'' said the U'wa Indians
             who hosted the three Americans before gunmen kidnapped them Feb. 25.

             The bullet-riddled and bound bodies of Ingrid Washinawatok, 41; Terence
             Freitas, 24; and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, were found Thursday in Venezuelan territory,
             100 feet from the Arauca River that separates northeastern Colombia and
             neighboring Venezuela. The three had traveled to Colombia to help the U'wa fight
             off oil exploration on their tribal reserve.

             The Caracol radio network said rebel sources reported they were preparing a
             statement about the killings, but none was released by Saturday afternoon.

             In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Lee McLenny, accused the
             FARC of the ``barbaric terrorist act'' and demanded that the rebels be tried and
             punished.

             Colombians of all stripes -- including a second leftist insurgency, the National
             Liberation Army -- exhorted the government to find the killers. But a prominent
             politician said the murderers will never be caught or prosecuted.

             ``This will not happen.  . . . Impunity reigns in this country,'' said Horacio Serpa,
             leader of the opposition Liberal Party.

             Finding justice in Colombia is difficult, as Washington knows. The State
             Department's annual human rights report on Colombia, issued Feb. 26, noted that
             ``less than 3 percent of all crimes nationwide are prosecuted successfully.''

             An international tribunal might have better luck at bringing the killers to justice, said
             former Foreign Minister Augusto Ramirez Ocampo.

             Police and army officers remained convinced that the FARC's 45th Front, one of
             several units in oil-producing Arauca state, was responsible for the executions.

             A police colonel said the FARC's military leader, Jorge ``Mono Jojoy'' Briceño
             and his brother, German ``Grannobles'' Briceño, told underlings to carry out the
             executions.

             ``Mono Jojoy and Grannobles ordered the deaths of the North Americans but
             asked that it be done on the other side of the border to avoid problems,'' said
             police Col. Luis Eduardo Tafur of Arauca state.
 

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