Surrounding the smiling face of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells in a picture taken in the Colombian region of Sumapaz are a general linked to paramilitary death squads and soldiers of a notorious unit of the Colombian army accused, including by Amnesty International, of torturing and killing trade unionists.

The photograph, taken in a military base and posted on the Foreign Office website, was yesterday greeted with outrage by Labour parliamentarians and trade union leaders. Howells is pictured with the High Mountain Brigades, a unit held responsible for the killing of trade union activists, peasants and anti-narcotics police during the past three years.

Behind him stand the Colombian defence minister, Juan Santos, and General Mario Montoya, head of the Colombian army, reports of whose collaboration with paramilitary death squads and drug traffickers and links with disappearances and killings - including leaked CIA reports - were cited last year by US congressional leaders as part of the reason for the suspension of tens of millions of dollars of US military aid to the south American regime. The Colombian government denies the accusations.

Colin Burgon, Labour MP for Elmet, said yesterday he was "shocked and saddened to see these pictures. I have visited this area and spoken to ordinary people in the area and they view the military there as an oppressive force."

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of the union Unite, called for an end to British support for the Colombian regime: "Colombia is the world's leader slaughterhouse for trade unionists and it defies belief that the British ministers should be cuddling up - literally, judging by the photographs - with the perpetrators."

A Foreign Office spokesman yesterday acknowledged that there had been allegations of human rights abuses against the High Mountain Brigades unit pictured with Howells, which has been aided by the British government, but defended the minister's visit in December. "The minister went to Sumapaz as part of a de-mining brief," he said. "The Colombian military is working hard to address human rights abuses by the security forces. It's still an issue, but complaints against this unit have decreased considerably. The minister is not under any illusions, but to effect change and get our points of view across, we have to engage. We make no secret of our military assistance to the Colombian armed forces, including in relation to human rights training."

Richard Howitt MEP, Labour's European foreign affairs spokesman and vice-president of the European parliament's human rights committee, said it was right that Howells had visited the area, but that "having heard and seen for himself, as I have, the clear-cut evidence of links to human rights abuses, the important thing is that it prompts the government to think again about its military aid to Colombia".

President Alvaro Ulribe's rightwing government has been waging a longstanding counter-insurgency campaign against leftwing guerrilla movements. There have been large numbers of extrajudicial killings of trade unionists by the armed forces or outlawed paramilitary groups linked to the army and the government: an estimated 2,283 since 1991. In the case of the unit pictured with Howells, the three trade unionists it killed in March 2005 were claimed by the army to have been guerrillas, but according to Amnesty International the bodies were reportedly dumped naked in a morgue and showed signs of torture.

Liam Craig-Best, director of the TUC-backed Justice for Colombia campaign, who identified General Montoya and the High Mountain Brigades, said yesterday: "It is bad enough that the UK is aiding Colombian military units that violate human rights, but for a British minister to be photographed posing with the very unit that has tortured and assassinated trade unionists is shameful."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/11/colombia.humanrights