US Coal Firm Linked to Colombia Militias

A train laden with coal leaves Drummond Ltd's La Loma coal mine, in northeastern Colombia, bound for the company's Caribbean port Monday, June 25, 2007. A U.S. jury is to hear a civil suit next month that claims Drummond contracted an illegal paramilitary group to kill three mineworkers union leaders in 2001. Alabama-based Drummond categorically denies any wrongdoing. (AP Photo/Nestor Silva) (Nestor Silva - AP)

LA LOMA, Colombia -- The bus had just left Drummond Co. Inc.'s coal mine carrying about 50 workers when gunmen halted it and forced two union leaders off. They shot one on the spot, pumping four bullets into his head, and dragged the other one off to be tortured and killed.

In a civil trial set to begin Monday before a federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., union lawyers have presented affidavits from two people who allege that Drummond ordered those killings, a charge the company denies.

The Chiquita banana company admitted paying right-wing militias known as paramilitaries to protect its Colombia operations. Human rights activists claim such practices were widespread among multinationals in Colombia, and that Drummond went even further, using the fighters to violently keep its labor costs down.

The Drummond case, they say, is their best chance yet of seeing those allegations heard in court.

The union has presented affidavits to the Alabama court from two people who say they were present when Drummond's chief executive in Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handed over a large sum of cash to representatives of the local paramilitary warlord. They claim the money was for the March 10, 2001, killings of Sintramienergetica union local president Valmore Locarno and his deputy, Victor Orcasita.

Union leaders, former army soldiers and ex-paramilitary fighters also allege that family-owned Drummond, which shifted most of its operations to northern Colombia in the 1990s as its Alabama veins gave out, paid and provisioned the paramilitaries as a matter of policy.

Drummond says neither charge is true.

"Drummond did not pay any paramilitary or illegal or unlawful group," it said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press. Senior company executives declined interviews.

Rafael Garcia, the former technology director of the DAS state security agency, says in an affidavit that he saw Jimenez give "a suitcase full of cash" to paramilitary commanders "to assassinate specific union leaders," naming Locarno and Orcasita. Garcia is in prison, convicted of erasing drug traffickers' names from DAS records.

Former paramilitary fighter Alberto Visbal says in an affidavit that he saw Jimenez pay his boss, who went by the alias "Julian," $200,000 in cash. Visbal, who has fled Colombia, said he understood from another fighter present that the money was in exchange for the killings. Visbal says he was later sent to confirm Locarno's death.

In a filing in an Atlanta circuit court Thursday seeking more time to gather depositions, plaintiffs for the union also alleged that former union treasurer Jimmy Rubio saw a Drummond official _ they didn't specify which one _ pay a paramilitary leader for the killings. Rubio went into hiding when his father-in-law was murdered just before he was to give a deposition in the case, they said.

Affidavits from Rubio, Visbal and Garcia have all been entered into the public record in Birmingham.