US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad's Murder of Banana Workers
"The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed," said one attorney, "but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep."
BRETT WILKINS
Jun 11, 2024
In what case litigants are calling the first time an American jury has held a U.S. corporation legally liable for atrocities abroad, federal jurors in Florida on Monday found that Chiquita Brands International financed a Colombian paramilitary death squad that murdered, tortured, and terrorized workers in a bid to crush labor unrest in the 1990s and 2000s.
The federal jury in West Palm Beach, Florida found the banana giant responsible for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and awarded eight families whose members were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary group $38.3 million in damages.
EarthRights International, which first filed the case—Doe v. Chiquita—in 2007, called the verdict "a milestone for justice."
"The jury's decision reaffirms what we have long asserted: Chiquita knowingly financed the AUC, a designated terrorist organization, in pursuit of profit, despite the AUC's egregious human rights abuses," the group said.
"By providing over $1.7 million in illegal funding to the AUC from 1997 to 2004, Chiquita contributed to untold suffering and loss in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena, including the brutal murders of innocent civilians," EarthRights added. "This historic verdict also means some of the victims and families who suffered as a direct result of Chiquita's actions will finally be compensated."
Link to tweet
. . .
The AUC was formed in 1997 via the union of right-wing paramilitary groups battling leftist guerrillas—mainly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN)—in the South American nation's civil war. Closely linked to Colombia's U.S.-backed military, the AUC—some of whose members were trained by Israelis—was designated a terrorist organization in 2001 by the U.S. State Department, which cited its "massacres, kidnappings of civilians, and participation in the trafficking of narcotics."
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/chiquita-brands-international
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Diego Rivera's enormous painting "Glorious Victory" showing Eisenhower's Sec. of State John Foster Dulles with Guatemala's US-installed new right-wing President, immediately after US troops overthrew the elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Also there, John Foster Dulles' brother, Allen Dulles, CIA director, and John Peurifoy, US ambassador to Guatemala. The missile bears the face of Dwight Eisenhower.
How much has really changed since then, after all?
(250,000 Guatemalan civilian human lives vaporized, mostly indigenous, in the following long war that followed. )
Thank you for your comments, rampartc.
