SF voices concern at census firm’s links to Iraq prison

SINN FÉIN last night expressed alarm that a British firm contracted to help process census information has links with Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

London-based CACI-UK is a subsidiary of US contractor CACI International, which provided interrogators who worked at Abu Ghraib prison. Sinn Féin Foreign Affairs spokesperson Pádraig MacLochlainn expressed “serious concern” at the connection.

“The revelation that CACI-UK has been awarded a €6 million contract to work on the production and compilation of the 2011 census is deeply worrying. In 2004, three CACI-International employees who worked as interrogators at Abu Ghraib were named in a US military report into prisoner abuse in Iraq,” he said.

“The Central Statistics Office (CSO) needs to clarify why a company who provided interrogation staff to the notorious prison is now associated with this important national survey.”

A CSO spokesperson said CACI-UK had helped to process the last two censuses. “The CSO is fundamentally committed to ethical and proper conduct in all matters and would never have any dealings with a company convicted of human rights abuse. EU procurement rules do allow bidders to be excluded if they have been convicted of certain criminal or other offences but none of these exclusions applies to CACI-UK — or indeed to its US parent,” the spokesperson said.

A statement by CACI-International said: “In August 2003, CACI International Inc provided staff to the US Army to conduct IT and intelligence work in Iraq including interrogation services. Subsequently, in Spring 2004 an allegation was made that a CACI employee had been involved in the mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This allegation was not substantiated by any evidence or proof at the time it was made, and subsequent investigations by both CACI and the US government could not confirm it.”