A civil lawsuit against Birmingham-based Drummond Ltd. is now in the hands of a federal jury which will decide whether the coal mining company was liable of abetting war crimes and having a hand in the deaths of three Colombian union leaders in 2001.

“The company equated the union with the guerillas and Drummond aligned with the warring party that would advance its interests,” Rusty Johnson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the jury in closing arguments Wednesday.

Lawyers from the United Steel Workers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund are suing on behalf of the three slain union leaders — Valmore Orcasita, Victor Lorcano and Gustavo Soler. Lawyers from Drummond questioned the credibility of the plaintiffs’ witnesses and argued that the company played no part in the murders.

“It was vital to Drummond to stay out of the conflict,” defense lawyer William Jeffress told the jury. “That is the way you put your company at risk. That is the way you put your people at risk. That is the way you become a target.”

According to the defense lawyers, the union leaders made themselves a target of right wing paramilitaries by raising their profiles in the war-town country and increasing their anti-capitalist rhetoric.

“It is an unfortunate fact of life in Colombia,” Jeffress said. “That is the way that union leaders in particular but others in Colombia make themselves part of the conflict. You make yourself a participant and you are targeted by the paramilitaries.”

For almost 40 years, Colombia has been torn by a civil war between Marxist guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries. That violence intensified between 1999 and 2001, as the paramilitaries targeted labor unions it perceived to have an overlap with its left-wing guerilla enemies. Thousands of union leaders have been killed in the South American country, and in 2000, one person was killed in the conflict every 20 minutes, according to U.S. State Department reports.

In March 2001, Colombian paramilitaries dragged Orcasita and Lorcarno from a company bus that was taking them home from Drummond’s La Loma mine. The paramilitaries killed Locarno by the roadside and Orcasita’s body was found later with gunshot wounds to the head and visible signs of torture.

About seven months later, paramilitaries killed Soler, who had taken Orcasita’s place as president of the union.

In closing arguments, the plaintiffs took the jurors back through the timeline from 1999 through to Soler’s murder. Drummond conducted extensive investigations into guerilla attacks on its trains and kidnappings of employees, but the company conducted no such investigation into the union murders. According to the plaintiffs, the company did not want the truth to be known.

The defense countered that the company had done much to help the union after the attacks, giving union leaders months of paid leave when they were at risk of being killed and paying to fly the union leaders’ families into hiding. When union leaders, including some of the witnesses at trial, needed such help, they sought that assistance from the company’s president, Augusto Jimenez, one of the named defendants in the lawsuit.

“You don’t go to the man who has threatened you life for help if you truly believe that you have been threatened,” Jeffress argued.

The jury must decide whether the plaintiffs proved that Drummond knowingly assisted in war crimes. Deliberations continue Thursday.