Chiquita Brands International Inc, owner of the namesake banana label, must face a lawsuit accusing it of helping Marxist rebels in Colombia who murdered five US missionaries a decade ago.
US District Judge Kenneth Marra in West Palm Beach, Florida, let stand five of the lawsuits’ claims against Chiquita while dismissing 19. Yesterday’s ruling allows the missionaries’ families to pursue claims that the company aided and abetted in the murder and provided material support and resources to terrorists.
The families accuse Chiquita of paying the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group for protection and supplying it with weapons from 1989 to 1997. Chiquita sought dismissal of the case, which was the first under a 1992 law allowing Americans to sue US firms over terrorism-related deaths abroad.
“Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that Chiquita’s provision of money and weapons to FARC aided and abetted the commission of the kidnappings and murders at issue,” Marra said in the ruling.
The company, based in Cincinnati, was fined US$25 million after pleading guilty in March 2007 to engaging in transactions with a terrorist group for paying Colombian paramilitary militias US$1.7 million from 1997 to 2004.
“We’re obviously gratified that the case will go forward,” Gary Osen, the lawyer for the missionaries’ families, said in an e-mail. “This is a significant victory for the victims’ families, but it’s only a first step towards accountability for Chiquita.”
Ed Loyd, a Chiquita spokesman, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment yesterday.
The suit was the seventh since Chiquita’s guilty plea. Four were filed under a different law on behalf of about 600 Colombian FARC victims seeking at least US$11.8 billion in damages. Those cases were consolidated in Miami. A related suit by shareholders was settled last month.
The missionaries were kidnapped in 1993 and 1994 and later killed by the FARC, which the US government designated a terrorist organization, the families said in their complaint.
“The amended complaint alleges that the monetary instruments and weapons provided to FARC by Chiquita provided substantial assistance to international terrorism,” Marra said in yesterday’s ruling.
The families accused the grower of prompting attacks on Uniban, the seller of Turbana brand bananas and plantains based in Medellin, Colombia, and soliciting the FARC to burn the competitor’s supplies and block its exports.
Chiquita paid the FARC to intimidate labor unions and sabotage rival growers as a means of “quashing competition and assuring defendants of an accommodating labor force,” the families said.
Chiquita has said the company was victimized by FARC.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
RSS