Gangster `Jorge 40' dominates testimony (US coal company sued for death squad contracts on workers)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Birmingham News

Gangster `Jorge 40' dominates testimony
Saturday, July 21, 2007RUSSELL HUBBARD
News staff writer

The second week of the Drummond trial ended Friday with a former mining supervisor saying he saw a notorious gang leader leaving an office in Colombia that was affiliated with the company.

Victor Marenco said he saw a man known as "Jorge 40" leaving the office of Jaime Blanco, who owned the company that catered meals at Drummond canteens. The man, whose real name is Rodrigo Tovar, commanded a large paramilitary unit in the federal state of Cesar, where Drummond operates a 3,700-employ surface coal mine in a remote area.

"I never saw such a spectacle in all my life," Marenco said of Jorge 40 and his retinue of armed followers.

The Colombian mining union and the families of three labor leaders slain in 2001 are suing Drummond in U.S. District Court in Birmingham. They said in their civil lawsuit the Birmingham-based coal mine operator paid right-wing gunmen to kill the union bosses.

Jorge 40 was a prominent figure in Colombia, whose newspapers and media outlets often feature stories about militia leaders who are known to murder, extort and deal drugs. He is in custody after agreeing in 2006 to fold his 2,500-strong private army in return for a lessened sentence. Later that year, he came again to prominence when police found his notebook computer, which contained details on more than 500 murders he ordered.



Read more: http://www.al.com/business/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/business/1185007690186400.xml&coll=2

---

Rodrigo Tovar, "Jorge 40"

[Peace Patriot]

1. Nice pals the Bush Junta has in Colombia!

The Bush Junta does everything they can to undermine and topple the genuine democracies in South America--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, all with leftist (majorityist) governments--and to prevent any others from going the way of democracy and social justice (big leftist movements in Paraguay and Peru)--and ally themselves with the dinosaur government of Colombia, which tolerates the chainsawing of union leaders, peasant farmers and political leftists--and not just tolerates these atrocities, but has a government with very close ties to the rightwing paramilitaries (murderers, drug traffickers) who commit them, on behalf of Drummond, Chiquita Banana and other corporations and rich landowners. Guess where our tax dollars go, by the billions? Bullets, guns, tanks, helicopters, and all manner of military aid, to Colombia.

What's wrong with this picture?

[BreweryYardRat]

2. Time to seize Drummond Coal's assets.

Along with convicting and executing Tovar, his henchmen, and everyone in Drummond Coal responsible for the orders to hire a death squad..

There is no way this happened without orders from at least one person high up in Drummond's hierarchy.

I have no tolerance for the sort of corporate scum willing to kill people who are just trying to unionize.

[1932]

3. I think this is a much bigger story than people realize. This is about actually replacing government

with corporations.

This is a total subversion of democracy.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Ugly, isn't it? The U.S. based companies are aware they have the support

of the Colombian government at all times once they have made their arrangements with it. The very thought of Jorge 40 and his retinue of chain-saw murderers stomping in and out of the corporate offices of these totally-above-the-law clowns from the U.S. almost would make a maggot gag.

Going in to discuss knocking off men and women struggling to help their working brothers/sisters extract any benefits from foreign, imperious, underhanded, scheming scum, union workers desperately working, amid death threats to advance their fellow workers beyond SLAVE WAGES and appalling working conditions, is a murderous sellout of their countrymen/women, too dirty for words.

They, the henchmen, AND the wealthy foreigners, are NOT powerful people to be envied for their ability to buy and sell people, or threaten them into submission, or snuff them if they don't bow down. They are to be despised until the end of their days, and beyond. FILTH.

[LetsThink]

6. Is it about the risks posed by PRIVATE ARMIES..... too?

<<Shudder>>

[Judi Lynn]

4. Jorge 40, very, very close to the highest offices in Colombia!

April 13, 2006
The DAS scandals
If you’ve ever traveled to Colombia, then you’ve seen the DAS, the government’s Administrative Department for Security. As soon as you get off the plane, DAS employees are there to stamp your passport and, perhaps, to ask why you’re visiting.

The DAS does much more than stamp passports, though. It is a powerful agency, a sort of “secret police” institution founded in 1960. Its principal purpose is intelligence and counterintelligence, both domestic and international. However, it is also a law enforcement body whose agents have judicial police powers – they investigate crimes and can arrest and interrogate people. The DAS also provides bodyguards and security services for high government officials and other people at risk.

To someone familiar with the U.S. government, the DAS is a strange beast. It incorporates aspects of the FBI, the CIA, and the ICE (immigration). Plus, it is not part of any cabinet ministry like Defense or Interior – it is a part of the Colombian president’s office.
(snip)

If you think this arrangement seems like a recipe for disaster, you’re right. Disaster has struck with a vengeance during Álvaro Uribe’s administration. According to recent reports in Colombia’s media and testimony from former officials, between 2002 and 2005 the DAS was essentially at the service of paramilitaries and major narcotraffickers. It drew up hitlists of union members and leftist activists, and even plotted to destabilize Venezuela.


Jorge Noguera
All of this happened under the tenure of Jorge Noguera, Uribe’s DAS director from August 2002 until he left under a major storm cloud of scandal in October 2005. According to Rafael García, the agency’s former chief of information systems who has made a series of explosive allegations, “Jorge Noguera became the Vladimiro Montesinos of Alvaro Uribe’s government. He conspired against the governments of neighboring countries, he did away with leftist leaders, he participated in narcotrafficking operations, he maintained relations with paramilitary groups, etc. etc.”
(snip)

Links with paramilitaries

~snip~
José Miguel Narváez, who as subdirector was Noguera’s second-in-command at the DAS, has told Colombian government investigators that Noguera’s relationships with paramilitaries went beyond “Jorge 40” alone. Other paramilitaries who got help from the DAS included Luis Eduardo Cifuentes (“El Águila”), the paramilitary chief in Cundinamarca (the department around Bogotá); Carlos Mario Jiménez or “Macaco” of the powerful Central Bolivar Bloc; and Miguel Arroyave, who headed the “Centauros” bloc in Bogotá and in the southern llanos (the savannahs of Meta, Casanare, Guaviare and Vichada) until his own men killed him in September 2004.

• Narváez said that Enrique Ariza, whom Noguera recruited to be the DAS chief of intelligence, ran a telephone wiretapping operation at the request of “Macaco.”
  
  
• Semana reported that DAS agents protected alias “Salomón,” the right-hand man for a Cundinamarca paramilitary leader known as “El Pájaro,” whenever “Salomón” visited Bogotá.
  
  
• Semana also charges that on two occasions (April and June 2004), senior DAS officials foiled operations against “El Águila” by giving the Cundinamarca Bloc leader advance warning that the police and DEA knew his whereabouts and planned to capture him.
  
  
• Another witness, a 15-year DAS veteran named Enrique Benitez, has said he witnessed Noguera calling off a secret DAS operation to capture Hernán Giraldo, the head of the AUC’s Tayrona Resistance Front on the Caribbean coast. Shortly afterward, the DAS agent who developed the operation was transferred to a post in far-off Arauca department.
  
  
• García said that some DAS contractors paid 10 percent kickbacks to DAS officials, who then passed most of the money on to the paramilitaries.
  
  
• García told Semana, “Once Noguera told me that he had to do a favor for the paramilitaries of the llanos,” meaning Arroyave’s “Centauros Bloc.” Indeed, according to an unnamed DAS agent who complained to Narváez along with fired agent Carlos Moreno, DAS intelligence chief Ariza “stole some intelligence documents on Miguel Arroyave” and erased the information they contained. Added García, “I know that Jimmy Nassar, who ended up being Noguera’s advisor, offered this service. I’ve known people from the Centauros Bloc, here in jail, to whom Nassar offered to erase their files in the system. He charged between 5 million and 10 million pesos (US$2,250 to US$4,500).”
  
  
• Moreno, the fired DAS agent, alleged that the DAS was performing a similar file-disappearance service for Arroyave’s principal rival in the llanos region, Héctor Buitrago alias "Martin Llanos," in exchange for millions of pesos.
  
  
• Cambio reports that the DAS even gave "Jorge 40" an armored SUV intended for President Uribe's exclusive use. “On November 17, 2004, the DAS sub-director at the time, José Miguel Narváez, called the DAS section chiefs in Atlántico and Cesar and told them that, by Noguera’s instructions, they were to place at the disposal of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, Jorge 40, in Santa Fe de Ralito – where the AUC commanders were concentrated – an armored SUV for his personal protection. That did happen, and days later the paramilitary chief was using a red Toyota Prado, license plate QGC851, with armor and a special chip to allow it to pass through the security forces’ roadblocks. The incredible part of this story is that the vehicle had been acquired by the Atlántico governor’s office and given to the DAS for the exclusive use of President Álvaro Uribe when he visits the Atlantic coast. Informed about the matter, the government ordered a search for the vehicle, which was found in Valledupar with Jorge 40 at the wheel.”
  
  More:
  http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000242.htm

[Judi Lynn]

7. More to consider on paramilitaries for those who are unacquainted with Colombian death squads:

Colombia's Paramilitary
Profile of an Entrenched Terror Network

by Adam Weiss
April 22, 2002

~snip~
The human rights violations against civilians carried out by the AUC paramilitaries are among the worst in the world and continue to occur on a large scale throughout Colombia. In 2000, there were over 4,000 politically motivated killings and 300,000 internally displaced people in Colombia. Such figures have been typical for Colombia and the majority of these crimes are the responsibility of the paramilitaries. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights claims that paramilitaries are “the main perpetrators of collective killings.” The major types of human rights violations the AUC paramilitaries commit are massacres and selective assassinations. The use of such tactics goes back to the early days of MAS and the ACCU and have escalated since the mid-1990’s.

A massacre is defined by the Colombian Ministry of Defense as “the killings of four or more people at a time.” The ministry claimed that paramilitaries were responsible for 75 massacres between January and October of 2000-76% of all massacres during that time span. The list of recorded massacres is far too lengthy to describe here, but a partial listing is necessary to give a true sense of what paramilitary forces do and why. The following are descriptions of two of the most notorious paramilitary massacres in the past few years.

One massacre occurred in Mapiripan, Meta department, during July 15-20, 1997. When an estimated 200 ACCU soldiers arrived in the town on July 15, among those they searched for were peasants who had taken part in a department-wide protest over the poor economic conditions in Meta. These people, among others, were rounded up and taken to the town slaughterhouse where soldiers tortured them and then slit their throats. One victim, Antonio Maria Herrera, “was hung from a hook, and ACCU members quartered his body, throwing the pieces into the Guaviare River.” Other victims were decapitated. A local judge in Mapiripan, Leonardo Ivan Cortes, repeatedly contacted the local security forces during the massacre, requesting help. He stated that, “Each night they kill groups of five to six defenseless people, who are cruelly and monstrously massacred after being tortured. The screams of humble people are audible, begging for mercy and asking for help.” Cortes made a total of eight telephone calls to local security forces, but neither the police nor army made any appearance or investigation until the paramilitaries had left, strong evidence of military acceptance of paramilitary activity.
(snip)

Organized labor has been another major target. In 2000, at least 129 trade union leaders were murdered in Colombia. Out of all trade unionists killed in the world, three-fifths are Colombian. The majority of killings are the work of the paramilitaries. It is not difficult to see why organized labor is targeted. As David Bacon notes,

“The Colombian government also views union activity as a threat because it challenges its basic economic policies. The Pastrana administration is under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to cut the public sector budget, causing mass terminations, along with cuts in education, health care, and pensions…The money would be used to pay the country’s debt to foreign banks and lending institutions, making Colombia more attractive to foreign investors.”

Human rights workers have been under consistent harassment by paramilitaries. In 2000, numerous members of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared (Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos-Colombia ) were murdered and/or received death threats. Members of the Regional Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights (Corporación Regional para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos ) received over 12 death threats in August and September of 2000 and were on a paramilitary death list circulated in Barrancabermeja. Internal human rights groups are not the only ones to come under threat. In early 2001, the international human rights organization Peace Brigades International, which sends people to numerous countries all over the world to accompany human rights defenders whose lives are believed to be in danger, was declared to be a military target by paramilitaries.

More:
http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/weiss_paramilitaries.cfm

[acmavm]

8. Uribe is just the kind of guy that bush** would love. One who knows how

to 'efficiently' put down dissent.

They'd be doing this to us if the could.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Absolutely, it would have happened in 2001, if they'd had the power!

Unlucky for _Bush, too many Americans were too affluent, too established, too un-needy for him to be able to intimidate as many as he'd want, right off the bat, or he would have done all this, and more, no doubt!

His pal, Alvaro Uribe was also raised as a tremendously priviledged brat, although it appears he's quite a bit more educated. I believe _Bush has adored the lil' fella from the first! Envy probably enters into it BIG TIME! What a rush, running a racket like his, for a born bully.



"I’ve Been Loving You Too Long to Stop Now"

Here's a look at Uribe's life up to the present:

Alvaro Uribe Velez (born July 4, 1952) is the President of Colombia (since 2002). He is a lawyer from the University of Antioquia, with a specialization in Administration and Management from Harvard University. He is married to Lina Moreno de Uribe and has two sons, Tomas and Jeronimo. He is running for the presidency again in (2006-2010).

Early life and education
Alvaro Uribe is the first of five children born to Alberto Uribe Sierra and Laura Velez. His mother had served as councilwoman and his father was a wealthy landowner and cattle rancher. At the age of ten, his family moved to Medellin from their Salgar ranch. He studied in schools managed by Jesuits and Benedictines. He was a 1970 graduate of the prestigious Jorge Robledo Institute, where his academic performance allowed him to be exempt from all final exams during the last two years of school.

Uribe later studied at the University of Antioquia, where he earned his law degree in 1977, and where he became a member of the Colombian Liberal Party's "Liberal Youth" wing. He was awarded a scholarship for excellence during his time at university.

In 1993 he finished a specialization in Administration and Management at Harvard University, where he also attended a conflict negotiation course.

From 1998 to 2000 he was a senior associate member at St Antony's College, Oxford University in England, on a British Council Simon Bolivar scholarship.

Political life
In 1976 Uribe was Chief of assets for the Public Enterprises of Medellin (Empresas Publicas de Medellin). Under the presidency of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, he served as Secretary General of the Ministry of Labor from 1977 to 1978. He married during this time.

President Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala named him director of Civil Aviation from 1980 to 1982.

He left this position to become Mayor of Medellin in 1982, a post he held for five months, during which he promoted several public works. He was later relieved of his position.
(snip/...)

http://www.mundoandino.com/Colombia/Alvaro-Uribe

[flashl]

10. This article seems to be a great companion article to read

It seems that Alabama exported it's shameful and brutal practices.

Corporations in Alabama profited from 'slavery in all but name.' "From Alabama's Past, Capitalism and Racism in a Cruel Partnership" (Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 7/16) staff reporter, Douglas A. Blackmon chronicled one of the most brutal, inhuman and, heretofore, unmentioned atrocities in American history. Blackmon's research showed that for over a 60-year period ending in 1928, well over 100,000 mostly indigent African-American men living in Alabama were pressed into forced labor on private farms, construction sites, railroads and mines. As many as 30,000 died while working with minimal health care, housing and food and enduring unsafe conditions, savage beatings and torture.

http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/161/1/3/

[Judi Lynn]

11. Something raised in your article I've never realized, but it sounds, unfortunately, absolutely true.

It points out that in organizing unions in the South after the Civil War, the poor white workers didn't want to join unions where they would interact with black workers.

Racism kept unions from growing strong in the South. Unbelievable. The price that was paid was deplorable working conditions for everyone. Unions STILL don't florish in the South, either, do they? Swear words!

So a result was that people in search of better paying jobs than they could find simply moved north, and the South remained poor and undeveloped for a very long time, and open to worker abuse of the worst kind, which suited the Drummond Company just fine!

Well, they were reborn when they moved and set up operations in Colombia, weren't they? No medical insurance to worry about, no workers' compensation, etc., etc., etc. If they get out of line, have them murdered publicly, to throw a scare into the other workers, like the three union workers taken off the bus not all that long ago, and slaughtered in front of their fellow bus-riders, and co-workers, except for the one they took away and tortured first, before murdering him.



The three assassinated Drummond union workers

[flashl]

12. White workers who avoid interactions with black workers

I have read personal accounts and even economists accounts about what they thought retarded growth in the South. These accounts agreed that many whites suffered along with blacks because they were duped into thinking that they were somehow better served under terrible conditions. In some respects, I see no change.

[bobthedrummer]

13. Colombian army commander Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe and Triple-A

(Triple-A:American Anticommunist Alliance)

From The National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 223

"The Truth about Triple-A"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB223/index.htm

[Judi Lynn]

14. "Several lawmakers say multinationals that aid violent groups...are not being prosecuted."

U.S. bending rules on Colombia terror?
Several lawmakers say multinationals that aid violent groups in return for protection are not being prosecuted.

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
July 22, 2007


~snip~
The lawmakers are particularly concerned about claims that the Drummond Co. coal-mining operations paid paramilitaries from the AUC to kill three trade union leaders who were trying to organize workers at its coal mines in 2001. Drummond has been accused in a civil lawsuit first filed in 2002 of using the AUC as a de facto security force that intimidated employees to keep them from unionizing and demanding higher wages.

Drummond has strenuously denied the claims and is fighting them in a civil trial that began this month.

In a letter to Ashcroft on June 25, 2003, four lawmakers on House foreign affairs oversight committees urged thorough investigations of the Drummond case and allegations against two U.S.-owned Coca-Cola bottling firms in Colombia that are also accused in lawsuits of colluding with the paramilitaries. The bottlers, which are independent of the Atlanta-based beverage giant, have denied any wrongdoing.
(snip)

In May, six congressmen wrote a follow-up letter to Gonzales, asking whether the Justice Department had investigated their "grave concerns" that other companies, particularly Drummond, might be engaging in similar activity. The lawmakers said that Iguaran had launched a criminal investigation of Drummond and that though the allegations were unproved, they were "sufficiently credible" for the Justice Department to launch criminal proceedings of its own.

"If no such probe has begun, we strongly urge that one be started immediately," wrote Reps. Delahunt, Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), George Miller (D-Martinez), Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) and Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.).

No response

The Justice Department has not responded to that letter, the lawmakers say.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-chiquita22jul22,0,186594.story?page=1&coll=la-home-center

[Judi Lynn]

15. You might find this odd news from a Canadian paper worth considering:

Chainsaws in Colombia
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, July 20, 2007

~snip~
The victims were dragged into the town slaughterhouse. Amid chains and meat hooks, they were bound, suspended and interrogated. Where are the guerrillas? Are you a guerrilla? The men had machetes and chainsaws. Whatever the victims said, however they pleaded, they lost a hand. An arm. A leg. Finally, almost mercifully, they were decapitated.

When Stephen Harper flew to Bogota earlier this week, the news stories mentioned "human rights concerns." They didn't say much more than that, which is a pity because in Colombia "human rights concerns" are not vague abstractions. They involve men who torture and murder with chainsaws: A few have been caught and punished; some have walked away whistling; and many are still at it.
(snip)

As a member of the land-owning elite in the province that spawned the paramilitaries, there have long been suspicions about Mr. Uribe's connections. And in 2004, a Newsweek reporter obtained a 1991 U.S. military intelligence report that states "Uribe has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria." Yes, that Pablo Escobar.

The U.S. government reacted to the Newsweek story by denouncing its own intelligence as wrong and meaningless. Mr. Uribe is the White House's strongest ally in Latin America. Last year, George W. Bush signed a free trade agreement with Mr. Uribe, but Democrats in Congress refuse to pass it until real progress is seen on human rights.

That's the essential background needed to understand Mr. Harper's remarks in Bogota. He wasn't musing in the abstract. He was taking sides in an important American debate.

If Canadians take human rights seriously, it will be an important debate in this country, too.
(snip/..)

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=f746a53a-adee-4953-9199-3e8f6a65f0d2

[bobthedrummer]

16. Utah kick

[Judi Lynn]

17. Wow! Thanks. n/t

[Zhade]

18. KICK FOR TRUTH

NT