It’s halftime in the Drummond trial. After nearly two weeks of testimony and taped depositions from union leaders, company managers and former paramilitaries, the plaintiffs’ attorneys rested their case Monday afternoon. A civil suit, brought on behalf of three slain Colombian union leaders under the Alien Tort Statute, accuses the Birmingham-based mining company of aiding rightwing paramilitaries in the South American country’s four-decade old civil war. In 2001, those paramilitaries murdered three union leaders from Drummond’s mine there. The La Loma mine is the world’s largest open pit coalmine, producing about 25 million tons of coal per year.
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On Monday, plaintiffs’ attorneys called their last witness, Drummond Ltd. President Augusto Jimenez. Previous witnesses, including union leaders, claimed that Jimenez and Drummond were unresponsive to their requests for protection from paramilitary activities.
But on the stand, Jimenez gave a different perspective to a similar story. According to Jimenez, he was not trying to threaten union leaders when he told them to turn down their rhetoric. Rather, he said, he was encouraging them not to antagonize the right-wing paramilitaries or put themselves in danger.
Jimenez denied that he ever used the Colombian colloquialism, “the fish drowns by opening its mouth,” contrary to what several union leaders had testified in the previous weeks. He claimed that he wouldn’t use that saying, because it doesn’t make logical sense.
“The fish drowns by opening his mouth underwater — I would not say that beause that is where they live, underwater,” he said.
Under direct examination by plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jimenez said that the company did not have a policy for firing employees with ties to illegal militias and that they did not always do background checks on new employees. In 2003, two years after the murders, the company hired retired Colombian Julian Villate as a security consultant. Human rights organizations, as well as Colombian officials, have accused Villate of having direct ties to paramilitaries and spying on at least 175 union leaders and activists in “Operation Dragon,” which predated his work at Drummond.
Meanwhile, the Colombian magazine, Semana, published an interview Friday with Javier Ochoa, a former paramilitary now serving a 31-year sentence in Colombian prison. According to the Semana article, Ochoa claims to have been among the paramilitaries who murdered the three union leaders. Only, he says that the company didn’t pay for the murders, but rather a food service company that had contracted with Drummond.
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July 24th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Interesting. I doubt we’ll ever get the whole truth on this, but I appreciate your coverage. What’s your prediction on a verdict at this point (if you’re ready to make one)?
July 24th, 2007 at 11:21 am
I’ve covered lots of criminal trials but fewer civil cases, so my intuition is a little skewed. The biggest difference is the burden of proof. In criminal cases, the burden is beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case the burden is a preponderance of the evidence, or in layman’s terms: Whoever gets the most marbles wins. After the plaintiffs rested yesterday, several of us thought Judge Bowdre might toss the case then, and yet she let it continue.
So far there has been a lot of interesting testimony about lousy working conditions in the mine, fortification of the site and the political climate in the country. However, there hasn’t been a clear line from Drummond to the paramilitaries. No smoking gun.
One attorney I spoke with yesterday told me that the defense portion could be finished this week, with closing arguments and jury deliberations at the beginning of next week.