Unionists' Murders Cloud Prospects for Colombia Trade Pact

The disclosures are now reaching two American firms here. An Alabama coal company, Drummond, is being sued in U.S. District Court by Colombian workers who accuse company executives of contracting with paramilitary groups to kill three union leaders. Colombian prosecutors are also going to investigate the smuggling of 3,000 assault rifles in 2001 to a Chiquita Brands International dock in northern Colombia; the weapons wound up in the hands of paramilitary fighters, according to an extensive report by the Organization of American States.

The government says its recent disarmament of thousands of paramilitary fighters has reduced the killings of union members, with far fewer slain than in the 1990s, when in some years more than 200 died. A new unit in the attorney general's office is investigating 200 high-profile murders of union members, and a $25 million protection program has three times the budget it had in 2002.

"We have been successful in many ways," Vice President Francisco Santos said in an interview. "Obviously with the DAS case, it hinders our position, but to tell you the truth, I can show day in and day out that during the first four years at least 20 percent of my time as vice president was dedicated to union leaders, to protecting them."

Even so, 72 union leaders and activists were murdered last year, making Colombia by far the world's most dangerous country for trade unionists, according to the National Union School, a labor research group in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city. Of 2,100 murders of union members since 1991, there have been only 30 convictions.

Paramilitary documents seized by authorities bolster allegations that intelligence operatives worked closely with the paramilitary groups.

One lengthy document, under the heading "Information DAS Friends," lists union members murdered by paramilitary fighters. An internal attorney general's report notes that DAS officials in the city of Barranquilla pinned rebellion charges against union activists, the main accusation made against guerrillas. Those activists, once freed for lack of evidence, were then killed by paramilitary hit men, who labeled the victims as rebels.

Interviews with union leaders across northern Colombia show that many activists had either been involved in thorny contract negotiations or had been publicly complaining of corruption when they were killed. The victims most often were from unions representing hospitals, schools and energy installations, sectors that prosecutors say have been infiltrated by the paramilitary groups.

Union leaders say the latest developments have validated the widely held belief that the killing of union leaders was part of a systematic effort to silence critics.

"We denounce," said Fabian Palacio, a leader in the hospital workers union in Atlantic province. "The only way to shut us up is to threaten us or, more tragically, to disappear us."

Carolina Barco, Colombia's ambassador in Washington, said that while the disclosures have been troubling, they cannot tarnish the whole government. "This is definitely not state policy," she said.

The epicenter of the war on union leaders was Barranquilla, a gritty port city just west of Santa Marta where Rodrigo Tovar, a paramilitary commander, is accused of running a virtual state within a state. Among those killed was Alfredo Rafael Correa de Andreis, a strapping 6-foot-3 sociology professor and union member who specialized in uncovering wrongdoing.

As part of an in-depth paper on people displaced by the conflict, he had discovered that public money was being siphoned off. He had also opposed a port project he said would raze a poor neighborhood. On Sept. 17, 2004, a gunman fatally shot him on a street.

His name, it later turned out, had featured prominently on a secret intelligence service list that Garcia, the jailed operative, says was provided to the paramilitary men.

"Alfredo Rafael was a man of ideas, and he didn't like the Colombian government," said his sister, Magda Correa de Andreis, who is suing the state for her brother's death. "That didn't make him a criminal. . . . They simply didn't like his thinking."