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Edited on Sun Jun-06-10 05:58 AM by Judi Lynn
Omaha Steve (1000+ posts) Tue May-18-10 08:13 PM
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Alabama Federal Judge Allows Suit Against Drummond Coal In Colombian Union Deaths To Continue
Source: Workers Independent News
By Doug Cunningham
A federal judge in Alabama has refused to throw out a lawsuit alleging that Drummond Coal company is liable in the deaths of union activists in Colombia. The suit alleges Drummond was complicit with right-wing death squads in the murders. In a previous suit a jury in 2008 found Drummond not liable for deaths of union activists. But former Colombian right-wing paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso testified in court and before U.S. congressional committees that Drummond and its subsidiary had paid his group to assassinate top union leaders at Drummond’s Colombian coal mine. Stephan Flanagan Jackson is a journalist and journalism associate professor at Stillman College in Alabama. He said he’s interviewed some of these right-wing paramilitary members.
: “One who told me himself eyeball to eyeball that he saw the money being passed by a Drummond executive to the right-wing paramilitary leaders with the orders to get – to wipe out – the coal miners who were leading the union there at Drummond. So there’s pretty strong evidence. It’s just a matter of will this evidence be presented and be believable in a U.S. court.”
For an in-depth interview on Drummond’s alleged liability in these deaths, listen to WIN’s Labor Radio internet program at www.laborradio.org
Read more: http://www.laborradio.org/node/13537 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4387532~~~~~Over two hundred Colombians have placed a lawsuit at an Alabama district court against a Birmingham-based Drummond coal company for financing right wing death squads in Colombia.
Drummond runs an open pit coal mine in the northern Cesar department, where paramilitary groups assassinated hundreds of civilians from 2000 to 2006.
The lawyers who presented the lawsuit claim that between 2000 and 2006 Drummond paid paramilitary squads millions of dollars to protect its coal mine from attacks by left wing guerrillas. But according to them, the paramilitaries also used the money to wage a broader campaign against left wing guerrillas in the department.
A woman who did not want to be named for security reasons tells of how her brother was killed by the “paracos” – as such groups are known in Colombia.
“The paralimitaries abducted my brother around 7 pm… They tortured him and broke his arm. They took out one of his eyes and pulled out his nails before finishing him off with five shots”.
She says her brother was a taxi driver who had no connection to guerrilla groups. But according to her a few weeks before his death, her brother had a dispute with his former boss. She suspects this man accused her brother of having links with the FARC guerrillas.
Human rights groups claim that paramilitary groups assassinated hundreds of civilians in the north of the Cesar province, as they pushed guerrillas out of the rich savannah.
Drummond admits its mine was surrounded by violence. But the company says it had no relationship with the local paramilitaries.
When Drummond was sued for the death of two union leaders in 2007, the company told reporters that the victims’ lawyers were simply trying to make some money with false testimonies. Back then, the courts said that there was not enough evidence to link the coal company to paramilitary groups.
But the lawyers like Rebecca Pendleton, who works for Conrad and Scherer, the law firm that initiated the current lawsuit, claim they now have compelling evidence.
“We have direct testimony from members in the paramilitary very high up in the rankings that they had directly received funding from members’ of Drummond´s upper management. They are saying that they received direct payment and that Drummond told them that they needed them as a private security force”. More: http://frontlineclub.com/blogs/nataliaviana/2009/07/from-colombia-multinational-mining-company-accused-of-hiring-paramilitaries.html~~~~~Colombia, Drummond, neoliberalism
~snip~
Colombia is the poster child for neoliberalism in Latin America. Since the 1970s the United States—and the international financial institutions that it plays a leading role in, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—have been pushing a development model on Latin America that calls, essentially, for governments to act in the interests of multinational capital. Governments are supposed to invite in foreign investment, and provide it with low taxes, low wages, and low regulation. They are supposed to cut back on social spending, and offer state enterprises up to the private sector. And, they’re supposed to quash any popular protest against these policies, using force if necessary. These policies have gone by names such as structural adjustment, the Washington Consensus, the Chicago Boys prescriptions (referring to the role of Milton Friedman and other economists from the University of Chicago), or neoliberalism. The United States has played a key role in the implementation of these policies—from working for the overthrow of elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and their implementation there, to Plan Colombia today, by which the United States provides military and economic aid that goes directly to implementing this economic model and crushing protest.
Union leaders have been some of the most visible victims. In the U.S.-owned Drummond mine in northern Colombia, three union leaders were assassinated in 2001. The company is currently facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly paying a paramilitary force to carry out the murders. Another U.S. company, Chiquita Brands, admitted to making payments for years to the paramilitaries. They claimed that they made the payments to protect their workers, but banana workers—and especially union activists—were the main victims among the hundreds murdered by paramilitaries during the 1990s and early 2000s. More: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2009/06/105852.shtml http://www.southernstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/images/sitepieces/drummond_protest.jpg
http://www.commondreams.org.nyud.net:8090/archive/wp-content/photos/0707_01.jpgDrummond Murders Case Explodes In Colombia & US
By Stephen Flanagan Jackson
LatinAmericanPost.com
He in his signature “guayabera” and me in my gringo cowboy shirt, we perch in the salubrious, balmy breeze of the Caribbean night in Cartagena, palm trees rustling over the balcony of the colonial restaurant. Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells me that “Colombia is immersed in a holocaust of Biblical proportions.”
Valmore Locarno would attest to that. Victor Hugo Orcasita would attest to that. Gustavo Soler would attest to that. The problem is the Colombians are all dead…slain, execution style. Assassinated in 2001 by the right wing paramilitary because they were union leaders at the coal mines of Drummond Limited in northeast Colombia. A controversial civil lawsuit charges that the hitmen were hired by Drummond—or at least that is what a Washington, DC attorney claims. His cross-town rival, from James Baker’s law firm, begs to differ.
“If you hire the Mafia and they kill someone then you are responsible” is the common sense approach, posits Terry Collingsworth, a Colombia labor union lawyer based at the International Labor Relief Fund in DC.
Drummond is mired in the tar baby called Colombia. Chiquita Banana got out—shaking off the tar, and paying a hefty price—$25 million. Drummond is sinking, sinking deeper into the Colombia quagmire, ironically piling up record profits from its worldwide coal sales, Israel its number one customer. Generous campaign donations from Drummond to both presidents—Bush and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia—will probably not stave off the inevitable—an embarrassing and revealing jury trial for wrongful deaths in a US Federal Court in its corporate hometown tentatively set for May 14.
The Colombia government March 20 announced an investigation into charges that the Birmingham, Alabama-based Drummond “aided and abetted” paramilitary to kill the three union members in 2001. “What we are seeing is some private businesses that recruit paramilitaries, aware of their conduct to kill,” said Mario Iguaran, Colombia’s chief federal prosecutor.
That same day in a US Federal Court in Alabama, the judge permitted the deposition of the Colombia Canary to go forward…if the key witness is not murdered first.
“I saw Drummond’s top man in Colombia, Augusto Jiminez, pass a briefcase full of about $200,000 to the right wing paramilitary with the orders to kill the two workers ,” Rafael Garcia told a LatinAmericanPost.com journalist from his prison cell in Bogota where he is doing time for manipulating computer data in his former job as a Colombia government intelligence official.
“I know the relation of Drummond with the Bloque Norte paramilitary,” claims Garcia. “Drummond paid the Bloque Norte to supposedly guard its transportation of coal from the mine to its Caribbean port. Drummond paid a terrorist group for safe passage…for protection!
“The paramilitary has secret employees at Drummond’s La Loma coal mines,” continues Garcia in his private prison cubicle. “Drummond knows who they are, but the other workers do not.
“Drummond also hires private security who are members of the paramilitary and Drummond knows they are part of the paramilitary,” swears Garcia . Drummond, Garcia charges, in cahoots with the Uribe administration, also was involved in the questionable takeover of a nearby oil concession from Llanos Oil.
The Colombia Canary, the caged Garcia continues singing a tune of corruption. “I can also tell you that there were two times that the paramilitary affixed shipments of cocaine to the bottom of the boats used by Drummond to send its coal to Europe, Israel, and the US,” offers Garcia, adding, “ I will go to hell to testify… if provided protection for me and my family.” Everything Garcia told the LatinAmericanPost.com journalist Jackson is repeated in his declaration…and he plans to repeat it all in another deposition in the next few weeks.
“Lies…damnable lies” is the tag put on the allegations by Drummond attorney Willliam Jeffress, Jr, also on the legal team of Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Jeffress’ lawfirm was rebuffed by the US State Department where it sent Ignacio Sanchez to lobby State to have the federal killings case dismissed on grounds of political action theory and international comity, unsuccessfully arguing a public trial could have an adverse effect on US foreign policy.
Reversing a longstanding trend of stonewalling in the case, Drummond has now turned to aggressive denials through the media. Drummond released a statement saying it will not settle with the plaintiffs. “Drummond publicly states that it has not nor will it make any payments, agreements or transactions with illegal groups and emphatically denies that the company or any of its executives has had any involvement with the murder of three labor union leaders,” said the coal company from its Colombia headquarters on Bogota’s Avenida Chile. A Drummond attorney, Hugo Palacios, confirmed that “civil and criminal charges for slander and defamation have been filed against Rafael Garcia.”
Washington’s Plan Colombia—millions in US aid—is a lurking issue in the Drummond predicament. The intrigue surrounding the case begs the specific application of the Leahy Amendment . Sources expect a closer look by the Vermont Senator, alarmed by the fact that Drummond has admitted in a deposition that pays/cen the Colombia military for security at its coal mines, nicknamed Camp Drummond due to the military and security build-up. More: http://www.birminghamfreepress.com/v5/0307/index.html ~~~~~ Gangster `Jorge 40' dominates testimony (US coal company sued for death squad contracts on workers)
Source: The Birmingham News
Gangster `Jorge 40' dominates testimony
Saturday, July 21, 2007RUSSELL HUBBARD
News staff writer
The second week of the Drummond trial ended Friday with a former mining supervisor saying he saw a notorious gang leader leaving an office in Colombia that was affiliated with the company.
Victor Marenco said he saw a man known as "Jorge 40" leaving the office of Jaime Blanco, who owned the company that catered meals at Drummond canteens. The man, whose real name is Rodrigo Tovar, commanded a large paramilitary unit in the federal state of Cesar, where Drummond operates a 3,700-employ surface coal mine in a remote area.
"I never saw such a spectacle in all my life," Marenco said of Jorge 40 and his retinue of armed followers.
The Colombian mining union and the families of three labor leaders slain in 2001 are suing Drummond in U.S. District Court in Birmingham. They said in their civil lawsuit the Birmingham-based coal mine operator paid right-wing gunmen to kill the union bosses.
Jorge 40 was a prominent figure in Colombia, whose newspapers and media outlets often feature stories about militia leaders who are known to murder, extort and deal drugs. He is in custody after agreeing in 2006 to fold his 2,500-strong private army in return for a lessened sentence. Later that year, he came again to prominence when police found his notebook computer, which contained details on more than 500 murders he ordered. More: http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/business/1185007690186400.xml&coll=2http://static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/45/129522708_2fe8758074_m.jpg
Rodrigo Tovar ("Jorge 40")
~~~~~
http://www.locustfork.net.nyud.net:8090/blog/workers.gif
The three assassinated Drummond mine workers. U.S. bending rules on Colombia terror?
Several lawmakers say multinationals that aid violent groups in return for protection are not being prosecuted.
By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
July 22, 2007
~snip~
The lawmakers are particularly concerned about claims that the Drummond Co. coal-mining operations paid paramilitaries from the AUC to kill three trade union leaders who were trying to organize workers at its coal mines in 2001. Drummond has been accused in a civil lawsuit first filed in 2002 of using the AUC as a de facto security force that intimidated employees to keep them from unionizing and demanding higher wages.
Drummond has strenuously denied the claims and is fighting them in a civil trial that began this month.
In a letter to Ashcroft on June 25, 2003, four lawmakers on House foreign affairs oversight committees urged thorough investigations of the Drummond case and allegations against two U.S.-owned Coca-Cola bottling firms in Colombia that are also accused in lawsuits of colluding with the paramilitaries. The bottlers, which are independent of the Atlanta-based beverage giant, have denied any wrongdoing.
~snip~
In May, six congressmen wrote a follow-up letter to Gonzales, asking whether the Justice Department had investigated their "grave concerns" that other companies, particularly Drummond, might be engaging in similar activity. The lawmakers said that Iguaran had launched a criminal investigation of Drummond and that though the allegations were unproved, they were "sufficiently credible" for the Justice Department to launch criminal proceedings of its own.
"If no such probe has begun, we strongly urge that one be started immediately," wrote Reps. Delahunt, Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), George Miller (D-Martinez), Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) and Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.).
No response
The Justice Department has not responded to that letter, the lawmakers say.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/22/nation/na-chiquita22 ~~~~~ Alleged assassin worked at US Embassy in Colombia
4/25/2007, 5:38 p.m. CDT
By TOBY MUSE
The Associated Press
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A retired army colonel accused of conspiring to assassinate President Alvaro Uribe's most vocal critic worked for the U.S. Embassy two years ago.
Former Col. Julian Villate — now employed by Alabama-based coal producer Drummond Co. Inc. — was accused by Sen. Gustavo Petro Tuesday of trying to hire hit men in January to kill him.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Marshall Louis confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday that Villate was employed by the diplomatic post, Washington's second-largest after Baghdad, between Dec. 2004 and July 2005, when he resigned. Louis said he was not allowed to reveal what Villate did for the embassy, or why he resigned.
"Sen. Petro's accusations relate to events which occurred well after Villate's time at the embassy," Louis said.
Villate also was accused before his embassy job — when he was still in the military, in mid-2004 — of spying on leaders of Cali's public employees union in what the union described as an assassination plot. That scandal was widely publicized at the time, and remains under criminal investigation. More: http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/66-news-from-latin-america/1531~~~~~Drummond Coal ordered murders, says convicted paramilitary
Drummond
Eight years after the murders of two trade unionist leaders, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, the Colombian judiciary has handed down the first convictions for their killers.
The two leaders of Sintramienergica worked for the American mining multinational, Drummond. Jairo Charris Jesus, a member of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for his role in the murders.
Locarno and Orcasita, president and vice president of Sintramienergetica, were killed on 12 March 2001, when they left the mine at the end of a working day. The bus in which they were travelling was intercepted by an armed group of the Northern Bloc of the AUC, in the village of Casa de Zinc, in El Paso province.
http://www.icem.org.nyud.net:8090/files/Image/News_pictures/0908.drummond.orcasito.png
Victor Orcasita
Locarno was murdered there, while Orcasita was taken by the paramilitaries in a van, and found dead in a rural area the following day. Locarno’s replacement in the union’s leadership was Gustavo Soler Mora, who was murdered seven months after replacing Locarno.
Charris was employed as “security coordinator” at the time of the killings for the contracting firm Industrial Food Services (ISA), a company that provided food to the mining camps of Drummond in Cesar department. Charris was found by the court to have given the order for the union leaders to be killed.
Jairo de Jesus Charris sent written correspondence to the court, during his case, explaining that the murders had been planned with Colombian and American company executives.
http://www.icem.org.nyud.net:8090/files/Image/News_pictures/0908.drummond.orcasito.2.png
Orcasita right, with other Sintramienergetica miners
Earlier this year Tolemaida Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, the Commander of the Bloque Norte, was extradited to the US for his part in the killings.
Drummond has denied all links to paramilitary organisations, and all allegations of complicity in the killings. On 26 July 2007, a US federal district court in Alabama acquitted Drummond of any responsibility in a case brought under the US’s Alien Tort Claims Act. A US appellate court later upheld the acquittal, despite the fact that witnesses from Colombia were not allowed to testify in the US federal court case.
However, in May 2009, an attorney for Colombian plaintiffs – the families of Locarno and Orcasita – filed another US lawsuit against Drummond, accusing the company of paying paramilitaries to murder union and community leaders, as well as paying paramilitaries to protect the transport of coal by rail from Drummond’s minds to the port of Cesar Ciénaga.
~~~~~
Bonus post:Nulabour’s Union Murdering Allies
11 February, 2008 — RickB
“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://tenpercent.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2008/02/kimhowells460x276.jpg
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.
Of course this is not new for nulabour, hey there ‘Sir’ Mark Malloch-Brown.
PS. As Korova reminds me, General Mario Montoya is a SOA/WHINSEC alumnus. It’s a small world. http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/nulabours-union-murdering-allies/ |
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