US: Families Sue Chiquita in Deaths of 5 Men
distinct sound of feet racing through the dark Panamanian forest
moments before armed masked men burst through the door of the modest
hut she shared with her husband.
Ms. Julin and her husband,
Mark Rich, were missionaries living in a remote village just miles from
the Colombian border when the gunmen - leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC - descended on the village.
At
gunpoint, Ms. Julin was ordered to pack a bag for her husband, and then
Mr. Rich and two other men, Charles David Mankin and Richard Lee
Tenenoff, were marched out of their homes, flanked by the gunmen who
chattered in Spanish and fired into the air.
"That was the last time we saw ours husbands," Ms. Julin said, recalling the night of Jan. 31, 1993.
A
year later, FARC rebels abducted two other missionaries, Stephen Walsh
and Timothy Van Dyke. The authorities said Mr. Rich and the four other
captives were killed by the rebels, though their bodies have not been
recovered.
Last week, Ms. Julin, who has remarried, and the
widows of the four other men filed a lawsuit against Chiquita Brands
International Inc., saying the company contributed to their husbands'
deaths by financing the leftist group.
The suit, filed in Federal
District Court here, seeks unspecified damages for the families of the
victims affiliated with the New Tribes Mission, based in Sanford, Fla.
The 63-page complaint asserts that Chiquita provided "numerous and
substantial hidden payments" to the rebels in addition to weapons and
supplies. That financing, the plaintiffs say, contributed to the deaths
of the five men because Chiquita had in fact supported "acts of
terrorism."
Colombia and the United States have designated FARC a terrorist organization.
Ed Loyd, a spokesman for Chiquita, which is based in Cincinnati, said
payments to FARC were made during the 1990s to ensure the safety of
Chiquita employees working on banana plantations near the Panamanian
border, a former stronghold of the leftist guerrillas.
Later,
after FARC was forced out of the region by the right-wing paramilitary
force known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, Chiquita
continued the practice of paying for protection.
"We always acted to protect the lives of our employees, and the threat was very real," Mr. Loyd said.
In March 2007, the company pleaded guilty to paying $1.7 million from
1997 to 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces - also considered
terrorists by Colombia and the United States - and agreed to pay $25
million in fines. The company has since admitted to also paying FARC.
Those developments prompted Ms. Julin and the other wives to seek compensation for their loss, she said.
"It took a while to sink in what they were admitting to," Ms. Julin
said. "It was a slow realization that they played a role in my
husband's death, that one of those guns could have been used to kill my
husband."
Chiquita officials disagree. In a telephone interview,
Mr. Loyd said that the lawsuit's assertion that Chiquita armed FARC
rebels was "categorically untrue" and that the company would
"vigorously defend" itself against the accusations.
Gary Osen,
one of several lawyers for the plaintiffs, said his clients' lawsuit -
along with at least four others accusing Chiquita of complicity in
killings carried out by the rebel groups - would be brought under the
civil provision of the antiterrorism law.
The law states that
any United States national "injured in his or her person, property, or
business by reason of an act of international terrorism" can sue for
damages in any appropriate federal court "and shall recover threefold
the damages he or she sustains and the cost of the suit, including
attorney's fees."
Adam Isacson, director of the Colombia program
at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said compensation
for the families of the slain men was not a foregone conclusion.
"It's
not a criminal case, so will the court require Chiquita to pay the
families? I don't know," said Mr. Isacson, who has been following the
litigation.
He said Chiquita was just one of many companies
doing business in Colombia that paid "protection money" to rebel
groups, the price of doing business in a notoriously violent country.
Ms. Julin said she and the others who lost their husbands to FARC do not see it that way.
"Chiquita was there to make money and fund these people," she said.
"How could anybody be involved in something like this without regard to
the human lives lost?"
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