For more information contact:
Gregory Hansel
ghansel@preti.com

The widows of five American missionaries who were kidnapped and murdered by the Colombian terrorist group known as “FARC” filed a lawsuit this week in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida alleging that Ohio-based corporation Chiquita Brands provided guns and large quantities of cash to FARC before and during the time their husbands were abducted and murdered.

March 13,2008 (MIAMI, FL and PORTLAND, ME): The families of five missionaries kidnapped and murdered by the Colombian terrorist organization known as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (“FARC”) and the New Tribes Mission of Sanford, Florida filed a lawsuit on March 11 against Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (“Chiquita”), the worldwide banana and produce distributor headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Preti Flaherty is among a group of law firms representing the five families.

The suit, filed in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida,alleges that Chiquita knowingly provided guns and cash to FARC before and during the time the widows’ spouses were brutally abducted, held hostage and ultimately murdered.  The plaintiffs’ suit is brought under the civil provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act (18 U.S.C. §2333(a)), which permit American citizens or their heirs and estates to recover damages for injuries that they suffered by reason of acts of international terrorism.

Background on the Families' Ordeal

In two separate incidents, FARC terrorists attacked, then kidnapped missionaries of New Tribes Mission, the complaint alleges. The first three missionaries – Mark Rich, Dave Mankins and Rick Tenenoff – were abducted on January 31, 1993 from the village of Púcuro, on the Panamanian-Colombian border. FARC struck again on January 16, 1994 when it raided a New Tribes Mission school near Villavicencio, Colombia, abducting Steve Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke, who were bound in front of their families and taken off into the jungle, according to the complaint. The families witnessed the horrendous attacks, and all five men were later discovered to have been murdered by FARC, the complaint alleges.

Tania Julin, the widow of Mark Rich, said, “We spent years of our lives trying to find out what happened to our husbands and trying to get them home safely, and then all these years later we found out that an American company was paying the terrorists and we knew we had to do something.” Mrs. Julin and the families of the five missionaries are represented by a group of law firms, including Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios LLP of Portland, Maine, Kohn Swift & Graf, P.C. based in Philadelphia and Osen LLC of Oradell, New Jersey.

Chiquita's Material Support of FARC

The plaintiffs’ complaint alleges that from 1989 through at least 1997, Chiquita (through its controlled agent, Banadex) made numerous and substantial secret payments to FARC, and also provided FARC with weapons, ammunition and other suppliesthrough its transportation contractors, knowing that FARC was a violent terrorist organization. According to the lawsuit, Chiquita made monthly cash payments to FARC ranging from $20,000 to as much as $100,000 per payment.  Some of the payments were delivered furtively by Chiquita to members of FARC’s 5^th Frente by a former American military pilot known in the region as “Kaiser” who would travel to the Uraba region with his bodyguard to deliver the cash to FARC, often in places such as Chogorodo and Carepa, according to the complaint.

Chiquita Acknowledges Making Payments to Terrorists

In March 2007, Chiquita pled guilty to violating U.S. anti-terrorism laws by funding another Colombian terrorist organization, a violent right-wing paramilitary group named Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense of Colombia) or the “AUC.”   In the U.S. Justice Department’s Factual Proffer to the Court in conjunction with Chiquita’s plea agreement, the Justice Department stated that it could prove Chiquita made similar payments to FARC from 1989 through 1997. Both FARC and the AUC have been officially designated by the U.S. State Department as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (“FTOs”) in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.   Chiquita ultimately agreed to pay a $25 million fine to the U.S. Government as part of its guilty plea.

Gregory P. Hansel, a partner with Preti Flaherty further commented, “We mean this case to be a strong deterrent to anyone who thinks materially supporting terrorists is just a cost of doing business.”  Added Gary M. Osen of Osen LLC, “In a very small way, we’re helping the families in their search for answers and hopefully shedding light on how Chiquita conducted itself in Colombia.”

“The Anti-Terrorism Act was designed to deter exactly the kind of conduct we allege,” said Kohn Swift attorney Steven M. Steingard, who works on a number of other terrorism cases pending in New York federal courts. “Chiquita has already pled guilty to paying one terrorist group and this lawsuit alleges that Chiquita provided even further assistance to FARC. We believe the company must be held accountable for that.”

“We were there to teach and to give of ourselves. Chiquita was there to make money and they were willing to pay the terrorists for the opportunity,” summed up Tania Julin. “That’s very hard to accept.”

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