Eleven US soldiers have been convicted and five officers disciplined for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Around half of the interrogators and analysts working at Abu Ghraib were civilians employed by CACI. No private contractor or employee of a contractor has been convicted. No one has been charged with torture.
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An ethical Scottish census in 2011

Supporters include: John Pilger, Tony Benn, Bruce Kent, Iain Banks, Alasdair Gray and Tom Leonard.

Your support is welcome whether or not you live in Scotland

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To: The Scottish Government

We, the undersigned, are gravely concerned that CACI Ltd, a wholly-owned UK subsidiary of a company that has been involved in interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, has been awarded a Scottish Census 2011 contract for census printing and data capture services (Sunday Herald, 27th July 2008).

We think that it is wrong to give millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to a subsidiary of a firm that helped run Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were systematically subjected to appalling abuse.

We also think that it is wrong to ask Scots to give personal information to a company whose parent company is closely linked to the US military and intelligence communities.

We think that the Scottish Government's decision to work with CACI is in conflict with its opposition to the war in Iraq and with its duty to uphold human rights. And we fear that the Scottish Government's relationship with CACI may in future prevent it speaking out about concerns over the activities of CACI and other private contractors in war zones around the world.

We the undersigned call on the Scottish Government to cancel the contract awarded to CACI Ltd and to take steps to ensure that the Scottish people can have confidence in the ethical probity of the 2011 Census.

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The petition "An ethical Scottish census in 2011" was created and written by Richard Haley and Julia Davidson and is hosted online by Scotland Against Criminalising Communities.

Eleven US soldiers have been convicted and five officers disciplined for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib
No senior officers or senior officals in the US Administration have been convicted.
No private contractor or employee of a contractor has been convicted.
CACI was contracted to provide "interrogator services" in Iraq from August 2003 to the Fall of 2005. CACI says that a total of 60 of its employees served in Iraq as interrogators at various times in this period.
In September 2003 Major General Geoffrey Miller - the commander of Guantanamo Bay - recommended the "gitmo-isation" of Abu Ghraib. He proposed the creation at Abu Ghraib of a detention guard force subordinate to the Joint Interrogation and Detention Center (JIDC) Commander that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees."
The torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards at Abu Ghraib in the Fall of 2003 became public knowledge when photographs were released in April 2004 and has been documented in numerous official investigations.
Civilians employed by CACI had a major role in interrogations at Abu Ghraib. 32 CACI employees (out of a total of 149 personnel) were working for the Joint Interrogation and Detention Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib on 23 January 2004, according to a US Army document annexed to a report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba (although CACI says it never had more than 28 employees working in Iraq at any one time). Though some details are unclear, it appears from this and other sources that CACI employees made up nearly half of all personnel working as interrogators or analysts at Abu Ghraib.
No one has been charged with torture at Abu Ghraib. Partly this is because the US Adminstration uses a more limited definition of torture than European countries, and partly it is because the proven prisoner abuse is said to have been unconnected with interrogation. But this ignores evidence that the daily treatment of prisoners was part of the interrogation strategy at Abu Ghraib.

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More about CACI and the Scottish census
The Abu Ghraib Files

An ethical Scottish census in 2011

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