Declaration of Jaime Blanco Maya I, Jaime Blanco Maya, declare under penalty of perjury of the laws of the United States of America and the State of Alabama, that: 1. I am over 18 years of age, am of sound mind, and have no disabilities that would prevent me from providing the truthful facts based on my personal knowledge that are in this Declaration. I do not speak English fluently so I have provided this Declaration in Spanish, my native tongue, and I understand that it will be translated to English to be used in the federal District Court in the State of Alabama for a case against the Drummond Company for human rights violations committed in Colombia. 2. I make this truthful statement voluntarily, despite my knowledge that doing so is against my personal interest. I am confessing to conspiring with others to participate in very serious crimes. Additionally, there is no doubt that through this declaration, I am exposing myself to great risk by linking very powerful people to serious crimes. These people, in the context of Colombia, will not hesitate to use violence and threats against me and my family to silence me, or kill me. 3. I am currently imprisoned in La Picota Prison, outside Bogota, Colombia. I was arrested on charges that I collaborated with members of the United Self- Defense Forces of Colombia (hereafter “AUC”) to execute the union leaders at the coal mine owned and operated by the Drummond Company Ltd. near La Loma, in Cesar Province, Colombia. I am in the process of defending myself against those charges. 4. I was born fifty-eight years ago in Valledupar, in the Department of Cesar, Colombia. I am a specialist in managing institutional cafeterias, and received specialization from the Externado University of Colombia. I also studied English in a program for executives at the University of West Virginia, in 1999. 5. I was born to a regionally and nationally well-known family. My half-brother Edgardo Maya Villazon was the Attorney General for eight years. I also have relationships with the other powerful families of Valledupar. Valledupar is a small town where people who move in the same social circle all know each other and are friends. I personally knew Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, who became Commander of the Northern Block of the AUC, and went by the alias “Jorge 40”. He was a rancher in the region and a union leader. Before becoming a paramilitary leader, he held municipal positions in the mayor’s office of Valledupar, such as the secretary of office. Tovar Pupo and I attended the Carnival festivities and New Year's Eve parties at the Club Valledupar together. I also know and have been friends with Alfredo Araujo Castro since our childhood when we studied together in Elementary School at Sagrado Corazon de Jesus School. As adults we were in the same social circle, and were together at many social gatherings. When I got the food contract with Drummond, Araujo was one of the people who recommended me for the job. Our offices were located on the same floor of Drummond’s office buildings in Valledupar and we saw each other and spoke daily. Also, our homes were across from each other in Valledupar. 6. The families of Alfredo Araujo and Rodrigo Tovar Pupo were also very close. Rodrigo Tovar and Alfredo Araujo attended the same meetings and social gatherings that I attended. Our families know each other as well. Our wives and our children are all friends. We were all within the same powerful social circle that continues to control the city of Valledupar. 7. Valledupar is one of the areas that was at the center of the civil conflict between the government of Colombia and the main guerilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (hereinafter “FARC”) and the National Liberation Army (hereinafter “ELN”). The AUC, which was formed to assist the Colombian military in this war against the guerilla, began to have a major presence in Cesar in 1996. 8. I first began to work indirectly for Drummond in 1993. I was living in the banana zone of Santa Marta when I came into contact with the construction company, Norberto Odebrecht, a Brazilian company that had won the bid to build the port of the multinational Drummond Company. In January 1994, I acquired the contract to provide food to the workers as well as the executives of said construction company. These services were provided inside the facilities of Drummond’s port. In carrying out this contract, I began to provide food to the staff of Gecolsa (the Colombian representative for Caterpillar Co.) company in charge of providing equipment and machinery to the multinational Drummond. 9. As a result of my work, I received the food, laundry, and cleaning services contract with Gecolsa in the Privenow mine owned by Drummond in the municipality of La Loma in mid-1995. The camp where my company provided these services was called Rancho Pelu. In carrying out this contract with Gecolsa, I met and established relationships with some of the Americans who worked for Drummond. I had a very close relationship with Scotty Elmore, the first director of the mine, and D.L. Loeb, the first director of the operations, which covered the mine, port, and railroad operations. It was Loeb who helped me the most in building the company cafeteria and we were good friends. Later I was also friends with Joel Davis who was also a manager of the mine. Another American who supported me a lot was the camp director, Peter Caraveo. All of these Drummond managers had a close relationship with Jim Adkins, discussed further herein. 10. At the time I started working in La Loma, Drummond was constructing barracks or camps so that employees could spend the night inside the mining facilities. The construction caused clashes between Drummond management and the union that ultimately led Drummond to give up this project. From this point, it was clear that there was a bad relationship between Drummond management and the union Sintraenergetica, and Drummond had already accused the union of having links to illegal groups such as the ELN and FARC. Drummond management told me that the workers would not sleep inside the mine, and instead private sleeping quarters would be built in the municipality of La Loma. Consequently, Drummond needed a food contractor to build a food production facility with its own dining room for these workers. The manager of the mine during this time told me that because of the union’s affiliation with the extreme left, it was dangerous for these people to spend the night inside the mine where there was gunpowder and a large quantity of explosives was handled for the blowing up of raw material and subsequent extraction of coal. After Drummond called for a tender at the beginning of 1997 my company, ISA, and the company Alimentar from Medellin submitted bids for the contract. I won the bid easily not only because of my broad knowledge of the area but also because I had worked at Drummond’s port and for the joint venture, Odebrecht Conciviles, which built the railway between the Drummond mine and port. Alfredo Araujo had also recommended that Drummond contract ISA directly to provide food, laundry, and cleaning services for the workers of its mine at La Loma. 11. Drummond gave me a lot of financial support in building the food production facility. Drummond paid me every two weeks so that I had a constant cash flow, when contractors were normally paid after 60 days. Drummond also allowed me to charge a price that was between three to five percent higher than the market value to cover the costs for building material and equipment. At that time, the cost of construction of the production center, the equipment for the kitchen, cafeteria and remaining facilities, came to about $250,000 USD. 12. My contact in Drummond, who facilitated all of these benefits, was a United States citizen, Jim Adkins, the Head of Security of Drummond. I got to know Jim Adkins very well after I started my contract with Drummond. 13. At the time I started working in La Loma in the second half of 1996, Adkins was about 63 years old, with a robust complexion, light eyes, and was about 1.75 meters (5’9”) in height. Jim Adkins was a very friendly and cordial man, but he was ideologically identified with the extreme right. He told me that he was a former CIA agent and that he had previously worked for the Contras in Nicaragua. Adkins also told me that there was an investigation in Washington against him for human rights violations for his activities with the Contras in Nicaragua. Adkins was married to a woman named Pat, who was a former U.S. foreign diplomat. I believe she worked in the Puerto Rican and Brazilian embassies, and she spoke Spanish very well. They have two sons, who should have been about 13 and 17 years old at that time. In 1999, when I went to Morgantown, West Virginia to study English at the University of West Virginia, Adkins came to visit me. He lived about a three hours’ drive away, but he came to visit me for one weekend. I was in West Virginia in the summer of 1999, which was one of few summers when there were cicadas around that created an earsplitting scream. Adkins explained to me that this was a certain species of cicadas that only come out every 25 years. 14.