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.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS