Chiquita Panama to lay off remaining workers after management leaves country
PANAMA CITY, June 2 (Reuters) - Chiquita Panama's administrative staff have left the country and the firm will seek authorization from the government to sack its remaining personnel in Panama, the nation's labor minister said on Monday.
The news comes after the company fired some 5,000 workers of a total of 6,500 employees nationwide last month in response to a strike at its banana farms.
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Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Top Salvadoran ex-military officers sentenced for wartime killing of Dutch journalists
SAN SALVADOR, June 4 (Reuters) - A jury in El Salvador sentenced three retired high-ranking military officers to 15 years in prison for the murder of four Dutch journalists in 1982, one of the highest profile cases of the Central American nation's civil war. The three were charged on Tuesday for the killings of journalists Koos Joster, Jan Kuiper Joop, Johannes Jan Wilemsen and Hans ter Laag, who were reporting for IKON Television during a 1982 military ambush on a group of former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas - some of whom were armed. A U.N. truth commission 11 years later found the ambush was "deliberately planned to surprise and kill the journalists." The trial was closed and details about the defendants' pleas and arguments were not made public. El Salvador's civil war stretched from 1980 to 1992, pitting leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army and leaving 75,000 people dead and 8,000 more missing. Former Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia was sentenced by a jury in the northern town of Chalatenango, alongside two colonels: former Treasury Police chief Francisco Moran and former infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes. All three - respectively aged 91, 93 and 85 - were sentenced in absentia. Garcia and Moran are in hospital under custody and Reyes currently lives in the United States though El Salvador is in the process of seeking his return. "Truth and justice have prevailed, we have won," Oscar Perez, a representative of the Comunicandonos Foundation that represents some of the relatives, told reporters. "The victims are the focus now; not the perpetrators." Prosecutors had requested the 15-year sentence, taking into account the military officers' age and health conditions. The jury also issued a civil condemnation to the Salvadoran state over the delay in delivering justice, a symbolic measure that obliges the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Nayib Bukele, to publicly ask for forgiveness from the victims' families.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Three Salvadorian ex-military convicted of 1982 killings of Dutch reporters
A former defense minister of El Salvador and two retired colonels have been convicted of the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the country's civil war, a lawyer for families of the deceased said. A five-member jury sentenced the defendants, now in their 80s or 90s, to 15 years in prison after an 11-hour session on the first day of the trial on Tuesday. In a crime that shocked the world, Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemsen were killed while filming a television documentary. More than 75,000 people were killed in El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war pitting the US-backed military against leftist guerrillas. The Dutch reporters worked for IKON TV, a Dutch channel founded by several churches. The accused are General Jose Guillermo García, 91, former police colonel Francisco Antonio Morán, 93, and ex-infantry brigade commander Mario Reyes Mena, 85. None of them were in court for the trial, which was conducted with press and held in the northern city of Chalatenango. 'The fight against impunity took a long time, but it was won,' the Dutch ambassador for all of Central America, Arjen van den Berg, said outside the courthouse. In 1993, a UN-sponsored Truth Commission found the journalists had walked into an ambush planned by Reyes, who lives in the United States, and with the knowledge of other officers. The Salvadoran supreme court approved an extradition request for Reyes in March, but there has been no progress so far. García and Morán are under police surveillance in a private hospital in San Salvador. The defendants had faced up to 30 years in prison but got less time because of their age and ill health, the lawyer Cruz said. The NGOs Fundación Comunicándonos and the Salvadoran Association for Human Rights hailed the trial as a 'decisive step' in the search for truth and justice. 'We trust that this trial sets a historic precedent in the fight against impunity,' they said in a joint statement. The case remained unresolved for decades after the presiding judge received threats in 1988, prompting her to seek refuge in Canada. It was reopened in 2018 after the supreme court declared an amnesty law for civil war crimes unconstitutional, but relatives of the victims still had to wait years for the main hearing. Evidence such as a statement from a former US military attache and a military expert's report 'directly points' to the defendants' responsibility, said lawyer Pedro Cruz, who represents the victims' families. Garcáa led the Armed Forces from 1979 to 1983, when the worst massacres perpetrated by the military took place.
Reuters
8 hours ago
- Reuters
Iberdrola unions call on more than 9,000 workers in Spain to strike
MADRID, June 4 (Reuters) - Unions at Iberdrola ( opens new tab called on 9,000 workers in Spain to strike on Friday to demand higher salaries and fewer working hours, in what they said would be the first such stoppage in the company's more than 100-year history. Europe's largest utility raised the wages of its workers an average of 2.8% between 2021 and 2024 in Spain, while inflation was 19%, a representative for the CCOO union told Reuters on Wednesday. The unions, which represent a majority of employees, are demanding Iberdrola peg salary increases to annual inflation to ensure workers suffer no loss in purchasing power, the representative said, adding talks have been ongoing since January. The strike would be the first in more than a hundred years of the company's history, the union representative said. "The cost is minimal in relation to the profits the company makes every year," he added. Iberdrola's overall net profit in 2024 rose 17% from the previous year, according to company data. Iberdrola did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The strike will not lead to power cuts as utility workers are forced to guarantee a minimum service by Spanish law. At least 1,100 Iberdrola employees will have to be at work on Friday to guarantee service.
