"Late US coal tycoon personally ordered union killings in Colombia" [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Convicted conspirator in deadly union busting plot testifies before war crimes tribunal
by Adriaan Alsema September 26, 2024


The late CEO of US coal mining firm Drummond personally allegedly ordered the assassination of labor union representatives at one of his company’s mines in Colombia in 2001, according to war crimes tribunal JEP.

The court made this claim in a report on the interrogation of the security chief of one of Drummond’s contractors, Jairo Jesus Charris.

The security chief of food provider ISA was convicted for two of the homicides allegedly ordered by Drummond executives in 2009 together with ISA CEO Jaime Blanco.

According to Charris, Drummond security chief James Lee Atkins, a former CIA agent, told him and Blanco that Drummond CEO Garry Drummond had personally ordered the assassinations of union reps.

. . .

Drummond’s security chief ordered the security chief of La Loma, the company’s mine in the Cesar province, to warn the commander of the local unit of paramilitary group AUC when the Sintramienergetica representatives went home on March 12 of 2001.

The paramilitaries stopped the bus that was transporting the union reps and executed them on the side of the road.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/late-us-coal-tycoon-personally-ordered-union-killings-in-colombia/

(The union workers had been getting death threats regularly, and turned to the company to allow them to sleep at the company at night after work, rather than returning to their homes every weeknight, and Drummond flatly refused their pleas. They had been terrorized repeatedly before this atrocity occurred in full sight of their co-workers on the bus.)