Three members of United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) point with their weapons during a training session in a rural area of Puerto Asis, Putumayo province southern of Colombia in May 2000. (Reuters)
Did a US company hire a Colombian paramilitary group?
A lawsuit alleges that Drummond Company paid a right-wing paramilitary for protection.
BOGOTA — There is a railway line in northern Colombia where cars laden with coal rumble from the parched flatlands surrounding an open-pit mine across verdant swaths of coastal plains to a port on the Atlantic.
Until recently, the Northern Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, terrorized communities along the railway, as well as towns throughout the provinces of Cesar and Magdalena that the tracks traverse. The right-wing paramilitary carried out targeted killings, dumped its massacre victims in communal graves and caused thousands to flee their homes.
Now, a lawsuit filed in Alabama May 27 by Florida-based firm Conrad and Scherer accuses Drummond Company Inc. — a coal company with headquarters in Birmingham, Ala. — of paying millions of dollars to the AUC for “protection services” of its rail line, which had suffered attacks from left-wing guerillas.
“This financing allowed these paramilitary groups to grow exponentially and to enforce their paramilitary power on the populations around the railway,” said Rebecca Pendleton, senior paralegal at Conrad and Scherer, who traveled the region collecting testimony. The lawsuit contends that between 1999 and 2006, the paramilitary murdered hundreds of civilians while providing security for Drummond.
Drummond would not comment on the lawsuit.
In its defense of a previous lawsuit Conrad and Scherer filed against Drummond over the murder of three union leaders, the multinational company acknowledged the violence that had engulfed the region in which it operates. But according to Drummond, the company never assisted the paramilitary groups, or was complicit in paramilitary activities.
This week's civil suit refers to several meetings with top paramilitary commanders in which Drummond officials allegedly requested and paid for the AUC’s security services. The U.S. designated the AUC a terrorist group in 2001.
“We have direct testimony of participants that were in meetings between high-level paramilitaries and high-level executives of Drummond Company,” Pendleton said.
The complaint describes one such meeting in 2001, which was attended by the AUC's Northern Block commander, alias “Jorge 40." During the meeting, Drummond officials allegedly agreed to make a one-time payment of $1.5 million to the AUC followed by monthly installments of $100,000 for new troops and equipment for protection of Drummond’s rail line. By this time, lawyers say Drummond payments in 1999 had transformed the local front of the AUC from a small group of poorly equipped men to a 200-plus fighting force armed to the teeth.
You couldn't get better than a "senior" paralegal to comment for your story, Nadja? Worse still, you didn't ask her how she gathered her 'testimony,' did you? Did you ask her if she dangled big lawsuit settlement bucks in front of them? Or do people just love to tell foreign "senior" paralegals all about the killers threatening them in their neighborhood? Is it really that simple, Nadja? Or did she dangle big gringo tort bucks - which may well have affected their stories? I guess you weren't curious and didn't ask.
Meanwhile, which is it, the leftwing terrorists making terror attacks or the so-called 'rightwing' AUC? Graf two says it's the AUC and graf three says it's the leftists. Guess you weren't too curious about that either.
More importantly, define "rightwing" as you do with AUC terrorists. Some have trotskyite backgrounds, tell me how that makes them rightwing. Most respectable reports even by leftwing groups for Congress do not call AUC "rightwing" because the fact is, they aren't rightwing, they are just doper thugs of no known ideology. But it makes a nice neat symmetry for you to insist that AUC is rightwing just because the they fight FARC IS leftwing. Kind of assuages your own conscience for being leftwing and having to answer to that, doesn't it? They all do it, right? Wars are complicated, not symmetrical. Your simpleton version just doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Meanwhile, Ms. ace hot investigative reporter, some basic housekeeping: Magdalena and Cesar are DEPARTMENTS, not provinces of Colombia. You can get that kind of information from any Colombian (skip the gringo "senior" paralegals, ok) or else Wikipedia. You also spell an "anonymous" plaintiff's name two different ways - Barcero and Borcero, so which is it?
Did you ask the "senior" paralegal why her law firm kept suing Drummong over and over again, despite losing in courts? Did you ask who was paying for this? Was it a gringo union? Cuz I think it was a gringo union. But you didn't ask.
Methinks you aren't really interested in the craft of reporting, the art of writing , or the hard work of determining facts. You have zero skepticism and gladly allow yourself to be spoonfed by tort-happy lawyers looking for a big payday. This article signals you are an activist who'd like to be considered an objective reporter. You're going to have to try harder to fool us.
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