Ex-official's brother concealed union murders

[Judi Lynn]

Ex-official's brother concealed union murders
Tuesday, 07 February 2012 10:23
Charles Parkinson

The half-brother of Colombia's former Inspector General has admitted to concealing the 2001 murders of two trade unionists by paramilitaries, reported Colombian media Tuesday.

Appearing in front of the Supreme Court, Jaime Blanco Maya conceded that he knew about the planned murders of unionists who were leading action against U.S. energy company Drummond, for which Maya was a contractor.

"I did not kill, but I knew it was going to happen," said Maya, who also admitted to concealing the murders of Valmore Locamo Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita, carried out by the Northern Bloc of the AUC paramilitary organization.

~snip~

The murders brought about several lawsuits against Drummond and hampered the progress of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which only came into force late last year.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22063-ex-officials-brother-concealed-union-murders.html

Colombia is the 3rd largest recipient of U.S. taxpayers' annual foreign aid. It has also overtaken Sudan as having the largest displaced persons population in the world. It is the world's most dangerous country for union workers.

[Bozita]

1. Headline is a bit misleading!

It could be read as unions doing the murdering.

[Judi Lynn]

2. You're right. They glossed over his connection to the Colombian government.

Sure hope one way or another, this new developement might lead to some trouble FINALLY for the Birmingham, Alabama-based Drummond Coal company operation in Colombia, to whom the union men pleaded for their lives, begging them to allow them to sleep on the floor in the Drummond company at night, instead of riding home on the bus nightly, since they had been getting death threats from the death squad monsters.

Apparently they failed to realize the death squad torture/murder specialists were connected directly to their employers.

They were riding home on a bus, the paramilitaries boarded, shot one of them to death in front of the other passengers, then took away the other two, killed them both, after torturing them.

Attempts to bring the Drummond Coal company to justice in Birmingham, Alabama, of COURSE failed. That company has had "friends" in very high places.

[center]

(Left to right) Colombia President Alvaro Uribe,
Drummond President Garry Neil Drummond, and
Drummond Ltd. President Augusto Jimenez.[/center]


From SourceWatch:

~snip~
Conflict in Colombia

In June 2009, a Drummond contractor, Héctor Rafael Pedroza, was killed in a drive-by shooting at a billiards hall in Valledupar (a city in the Cesar province of Colombia).[5] Two other men were killed, including a demobilized paramilitary, Wilman Rafael Torres.[5] The third man killed was Milciades Torres Pacheco.[5] A taxi-driver, Héctor Enrique Zuleta, was injured.[5] The shooters were on motorbikes.[5]

The Drummond Company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits regarding the murders of 70 union miners and railroad workers, collectively.[6][7][8] The murdered Colombians were killed by the notorious paramilitary group, United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which had been hired by Drummond to act as security.[7] In addition to those killed, a lawsuit against Drummond describes "how hundreds of men, women, and children were terrorized in their homes, on their way to and from work… innocent people killed in or near their homes or kidnapped to never to return home, their spouses and children being beaten and tied up, and people being pulled off buses and summarily executed on the spot."[7]

WikiLeaks cables regarding paramilitary forces

According to U.S. diplomatic cables sent between 2006-2010 and released by WikiLeaks, Drummond paid paramilitaries for protection of its Colombian operations. An October 2006 cable said there were significant security improvements in the northeastern region of Colombia where Drummond operates due to private security operations in the area, including roving patrols along the company's railroad from their La Loma mine to the port in Santa Marta. The cable went on to say that these private security guards were former paramilitaries. Over the course of four years U.S. Embassy officials sent 15 diplomatic cables to Washington which expressed concern over the company's labor disputes, lax environmental practices and apparent links with paramilitary death squads.[9]

A federal Court in Alabama began a civil case against Drummond in 2010 for the alleged paramilitary links, in a case that is still underway. Victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia accuse Drummond of paying the paramilitary organization United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) between 1999 and 2005, during which time 116 civilians were murdered in the region where the coal company operates, allegedly by the right-wing militia. The civil case also seeks compensation for the relatives of several people who were murdered, which they claim was for refusing to sell their land to to make way for the company's railroad.[9]

More:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Drummond

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
WikiLeaks Latest Info Drop--Alabama's Drummond Coal Co.
http://alabamacorruption.blogspot.com/2011/03/wikileaks-latest-info-drop-alabamas.html

Check a couple of the letters at the bottom for info. regarding the way Drummond does business right here in the States.



[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Drummond Accused of Killing Trade Unionists, Former Colombian President Uribe Called to Testify

News from Colombia | on: Thursday, 11 November 2010

A paramilitary death squad commander has revealed how executives of the US mining multinational Drummond ‘congratulated’ paramilitary commanders for arranging the assassination of two union leaders at Drummond’s Colombian coal mines. The court room admission, by now jailed paramilitary leader Alcides Mattos Tabares, comes just days after former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was subpoenaed to testify in a civil case against Alabama-based Drummond for their alleged links to paramilitaries.

Mr Mattos Tabares explained how following the 2001 assassinations of Valmore Locarno and Victor Hugo Orcasita (the President and Vice-President respectively of the trade union representing workers at Drummond), two senior members of the Drummond management team met with the paramilitary commanders responsible for the murders to thank them for a successful operation.

Although one of Drummond’s former contractors in Colombia, Jaime Blanco Maya – the brother of the current Colombian Inspector General Edgardo Maya – has been arrested and charged in connection with the killings, so far no senior Drummond officials have been detained. But human right groups insist that both Gary Drummond, the US owner of the multinational, and Jean Jakim, Drummond’s head of security, were implicated in the murders and point to additional testimony from a former member of the DAS secret police who claims to have seen Drummond’s president in Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handing over a bag full of cash to notorious paramilitary commander ‘Jorge 40’.

In a separate development on Wednesday last week, the ex-President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, was served with court papers which will force him to testify in an ongoing lawsuit against the company which has been filed by a group of 500 victims of the paramilitaries who are attempting to claim compensation from Drummond. According to their case, Drummond financed paramilitaries between 1999 and 2005 to protect the regions around their coal mines and other installations and, during that time, over 100 local people were assassinated by the death squads.

More:
http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/news/article/834/drummond-accused-of-killing-trade-unionists-former-colombian-president-uribe-cal

[Judi Lynn]

3. A Mystery That Continues to Confound, But Also To Instruct: Colombia, Coal & Murder

February 08, 2012
A Mystery That Continues to Confound, But Also To Instruct
Colombia, Coal & Murder
by DANIEL KOVALIK

~snip~
On the evening of March 12, our delegation met in Bogota with representatives from a number of Colombian mining unions, and listened to their stories of losing union brothers and sisters to murder by right-wing paramilitary groups. As we discovered the next morning, at around the same time we were at this meeting, the two top union leaders at the coal mine of Alabama-based Drummond Company were murdered by paramilitaries in the department of Cesar.

Upon learning of these murders, and after hearing of the suspicions of some Colombia unionists that Drummond may have had something to do with them, we went to the U.S. Embassy asking for an investigation into this crime. However, we were quickly shut down by the human rights attaché at the Embassy, Mari Tolliver, who would not even deign to meet us in her office, but instead met us in the cafeteria near the vending machines. Mari, whose ostensible job involved human rights, told us point blank that the Embassy’s job is not to investigate U.S. companies for alleged human rights abuses, but, instead, to facilitate business for them. So much for Mari’s job description.

The facts of the murder of these two individuals – union president Valmore Locarno and vice-president Victor Orcasita – are undisputed. Thus, on the evening of March 12, 2001, the Drummond bus taking Valmore and Victor home from the mines was stopped by armed paramilitaries. These paramilitaries then boarded the bus, asked for Valmore and Victor by name and pulled these two individuals off the bus. The paramilitaries shot Valmore in the head at close-range killing him almost instantly. Meanwhile, these same paramilitaris took Victor away to a river bank where they tortured him before taking his life.

What remains a mystery is who ordered the hit on Valmore and Victor. Gustavo Soler, another Drummond miner who succeeded Valmore as union president, gave an interview to The Nation magazine in late August of 2001 in which he stated, “We think that some person from the mine had contact with the assassins because they knew exactly which bus (Locarno and Orcasita) were on.” Shortly after making this public declaration, Gustavo Soler was pulled off a bus taking him home from the mines by paramilitaries who then proceeded to kill him.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/08/colombia-coal-murder/