BOGOTA -- Four new witnesses in a U.S. lawsuit against the Alabama-based Drummond coal company have alleged the company had close links to illegal paramilitary groups in Colombia that murdered three local union leaders.

Paramilitary fighters pulled Drummond union leaders Valmore Locarno and Víctor Orcasita from a company bus in northern Colombia, where the company operates a coal mine, and killed them in March 2001. A third union leader, Gustavo Soler, was killed in September 2001.

Lawyers from the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steelworkers filed suit in Alabama in March 2002 against Drummond on behalf of relatives of the three victims. The suit goes to trial next month.

In recent days, the plaintiffs' attorneys have submitted to the court sworn affidavits from four new witnesses both expanding and detailing the allegations of close links between Drummond and the paramilitaries. Three of the new witnesses were scheduled to give videotaped depositions this week in an undisclosed location for fear of reprisal.

One alleges that Drummond's branch in Colombia provided money and vehicles to the paramilitaries. Another says the company paid off the paramilitaries directly from its employment office. A third says he was told by one paramilitary fighter that the Colombian man in charge of Drummond operations here paid the paramilitaries to murder two of the union leaders.

PREVIOUS DENIALS

Drummond officials in Colombia refused numerous requests for comment on the latest allegations. In the past, company officials and attorneys have denied any connection to the paramilitaries or the three murders.

Colombia is enmeshed in a four-decade conflict involving left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the government. The illegal groups have long extorted money from companies, landowners and even municipal governments to help finance their war. The paramilitaries were blamed for the majority of the extrajudicial killings until some 30,000 fighters demobilized as part of a peace process with the government launched in 2004.

The allegations against Drummond go far beyond paying off the paramilitaries to protect its Colombian coal operations from guerrillas.

Edwin Manuel Guzmán, a retired army sergeant who led one of the four platoons assigned to guard Drummond's operations near the village of La Loma in the northern province of César, said in his affidavit that the company gave trucks and motorcycles to the paramilitaries to patrol the area.

Guzmán also alleged that the company's local chief of security coordinated contacts between the paramilitaries and the armed forces at the time of the murders. Colombian security forces have often been accused of cooperating with the paramilitaries in the fight against the guerrillas.

CONFUSION OF NAMES

Another man, Isnardo Ropero González, a former security guard for Drummond, alleged in his affidavit that the company paid paramilitaries directly from the employment office, which he said was under the supervision of Alfredo Araújo, then the company's chief of operations in the region.

The fourth witness, Ernesto Ochoa, a former paramilitary leader in the region who is in jail, alleged in his affidavit that Drummond, a Drummond company employee he identified as Alvaro Araújo, and a Drummond food concession operator named Jaime Blanco were the ''intellectual authors'' of the three murders.

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