Colombia: ex-para names US banana companies in murder of trade unionists

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia: ex-para names US banana companies in murder of trade unionists
Submitted by WW4 Report on Tue, 12/22/2009 - 17:20.

Dole Food Company and Chiquita Brands International paid a Colombian terrorist organization to perform protection services that included murdering trade unionists, demobilized paramilitary José Gregorio Mongones said in an affidavit released Dec. 6. The testimony is the centerpiece of two civil lawsuits against Chiquita and Dole filed by family members of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia. Both lawsuits accuse the companies of funding the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the country's largest paramilitary organization, formally demobilized in 2006.

Mongones, better known by his alias "Carlos Tijeras," assumed the command of the AUC's William Rivas Front in the banana-growing department of Magdalena in March 2002, inheriting a protection arrangement in which Chiquita paid the group "three cents on the dollar per box of bananas shipped from Colombia," according to his affidavit. Dole paid the paramilitaries a tax of 70,000 pesos per hectare of land in the Front's area of control in the Department of Magdalena, the statement said. In return, Mongones said, the William Rivas Front protected the companies from threats posed by groups including leftist guerrillas, hostile unions, and common thieves.

Mongones names 12 people whose assassinations he says he ordered after Dole informed him that they belonged to or sympathized with leftist guerrillas. In all, he has confessed to ordering more than 500 murders. His confessions have come since the Peace, Justice, and Reparation Process began in 2006, under the terms of which paramilitaries receive a maximum of eight years in prison if they confess to their crimes.

Chiquita pled guilty in 2007 to paying over $1.7 million to the AUC, a State Department-designated terrorist group since 2001, and the company paid $25 million in fines. Heirs to the victims of paramilitary violence filed a civil suit against Chiquita shortly thereafter. Current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended Chiquita in the Justice Department suit that ended in 2007.

More:
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8096

[Downwinder]

1. I notice That Mary O'Grady didn't write this article.

[Judi Lynn]

2. She was no doubt busy sharpening her fangs when that information was released & didn't see it! n/t