March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Chiquita Brands International Inc., a U.S. banana company, faces a lawsuit from relatives of five U.S. Christian missionaries who were killed in Colombia in the 1990s, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that the company contributed to the deaths of the five, all members of the New Tribes Mission, by making payments to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the guerrilla group that's alleged to have killed them, the newspaper said.

The lawsuit claims that the missionaries were abducted and later killed when the missionary body failed to pay a multimillion-dollar ransom, the Journal said.

Chiquita has admitted making payments to the left-wing group, arguing that it did so under duress; Ed Loyd, a company spokesman, said this and other suits will be contested, the newspaper said.

Chiquita, formerly called the United Fruit Co., has a long and controversial history in Latin America; in the 1950s, it lobbied the U.S. government against Guatemala's President Jacobo Arbenz, who was then overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup, the Journal added.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Purkiss in London on apurkiss@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 12, 2008 06:27 EDT