According to Associated Press, the U.S. gave Colombian investigators this weekend the chance to “question” the two U.S. soldiers caught in a clandestine munitions warehouse. The soldiers will then soon return to the United States, free due to an immunity agreement from further investigation and prosecution for attempting to arm Colombian assassins. But don’t worry, assured gringo ambassador William Wood, “Immunity does not mean impunity.”

Of course, maybe they didn’t just attempt to sell bullets to paramilitaries, bullets that would surely find their way soon into the bodies of rural activists, labor organizers, political dissidents, or ordinary farmers who just happen to get in the way of the right-wing crusade. Maybe they or other U.S. soldiers had already completed such sales in the past. Now that the men are on their way to the United States, far from any witnesses that could be called to testify against them, the world may never find out.

The AP reports the embassy’s decision to allow Colombian prosecutors some time with the U.S. soldiers as a “concession.” In other words, it was done to quell Colombian anger over the incident rather than to help get to the bottom of it. The questioning then will be (or has already been) done in the embassy itself, in the presence of embassy officials to prevent the soldiers from veering from the script. (This is a trick the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá has, as Narco News reported in 2001, already pulled on NY Times reporter Juan Forero, when he was allowed to interview Plan Colombia mercenary pilots but only in the unreported presence of embassy officials.)