[A-List] Colombia: Death Squad Warlord Fingers US Fruit Companies

["tony black" <tal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rick Rozoff
To: Stop NATO
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 6:50 PM
Subject: [stopnato] Colombia: Death Squad Warlord Fingers US Fruit Companies


http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/17/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Scandal.php

Associated Press
May 17, 2007

Colombian warlord fingers U.S. banana companies

-The prosecutor's office estimates the paramilitaries
left at least 10,000 bodies across this war-scarred
terrain in mass graves. The chief prosecutor said that
the companies that financed the paramilitaries "didn't
pay for security, but paid for blood."

BOGOTA, Colombia - A paramilitary warlord said
Thursday that U.S. multinationals who buy Colombia's
bananas financed illegal right-wing militias that
killed thousands of people in a more than decade-long
reign of terror.

In testimony to investigators, jailed warlord
Salvatore Mancuso named Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte
as financing the militias, according to Jesus Vargas,
a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence who was
present at the hearing, to which the press was barred.

Mancuso testified that "each one paid one (U.S.) cent
for each box of bananas they exported," according to
Vargas.

Mancuso's lawyer, Hernando Benavides, confirmed that
his client had made those comments.
....
Chiquita Brands International Co. has acknowledged
paying paramilitaries US$1.7 million (€1.26 million)
over six years under a deal with the U.S. Justice
Department in which it paid a US$25 million (€18.5
million) fine.

Chiquita says the payments were made to protect the
safety of its workers but Colombia's chief prosecutor
has said companies that made such payments shared the
responsibility for paramilitary murders.

Mancuso didn't say why the companies paid the illegal
militias.

But labor rights activists accuse companies of paying
the paramilitaries to act as union busters, killing
union leaders and so making this country the most
dangerous in the world for unions.

Mancuso, testifying as part of a peace deal with the
government, also accused Colombians beverage giants
Postobon and Bavaria of paying "taxes" to the
paramilitaries in return for permission to operate
along the Atlantic coast, a longtime stronghold of the
illegal militia.

Mancuso alleged that high-ranking executives of both
companies were aware of the payments, which began in
the 1990s, said Vargas, a lawyer for the Mothers of
the Candelaria, a group that represents victims of
paramilitary terror.

Until its sale, Bavaria was owned by Julio Mario
Santodomingo, one of two Colombians listed by Forbes
magazine as among the world's 500 richest men.

Mancuso also said that the coal companies that
operated in the province of Cesar, home to one of the
world's largest coal reserves, paid "taxes", and that
the companies that transported coal paid US$70,000
(€51,790) a month to the paramilitaries.

Wealthy landowners and drug traffickers first created
the paramilitaries in the early 1980s....

The paramilitaries, known by their Spanish acronym
AUC, were listed as a "foreign terrorists
organization" in 2001 by the U.S. government.

The prosecutor's office estimates the paramilitaries
left at least 10,000 bodies across this war-scarred
terrain in mass graves. The chief prosecutor said that
the companies that financed the paramilitaries "didn't
pay for security, but paid for blood."

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