Technology giant Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) is facing a mass boycott of its services after becoming the latest business to be caught up in the US ‘war on terror’.
The company, whose technology, data and outsourcing clients include Royal Mail, Orange, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Transport for London, and Virgin Atlantic, is one of a number of corporations – including Acxiom and CACI – which work for the intelligence services.
Now CSC has been accused of working with the CIA on illegal rendition flights – in which aircraft are used to move prisoners internationally in so-called ‘torture taxis’.
The company has been linked in court documents to the rendition of German citizen Khaled El-Masri, whose case against CIA collaborators in the Macedonian intelligence services is pending at the European Court of Human Rights.
El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, was abducted in Macedonia on 31 December 2003 after being mistaken for a known terrorist by the CIA.
According to testimony he was blindfolded, beaten, sodomised, chained, hooded, drugged, flown to Afghanistan, and then to Albania on a plane allegedly chartered by CSC, where he was left on a remote road in the middle of the night approximately 1,500km from his home.
Human rights charity Reprieve has gathered documents that it says demonstrate CSC had been contracted to this and other illegal CIA renditions, and is calling for a boycott.
Reprieve has already written to Transport for London (TfL) which has paid CSC £100m on a temporary contract awarded in 2007. It has also written to the Ministry of Defence, which recently awarded CSC a £400m contract to administer pensions for veterans.
“We believe it is unethical for companies like Transport for London to give significant contracts to CSC,” said the charity. “We have done research on other companies who have contractual relationships with CSC and will be writing to them.”
In a written statement CSC said: “For over 50 years [we have] supported governments and private sector organisations, and done so within the law. As a matter of principle, CSC does not comment on speculation about its customers or their activities.”
CSC is not the first business for face problems over its links to intelligence services. Back in 2004, a group of 256 Iraqis sued CACI International and Titan Corporation (now L-3 Services) in the US federal court. The plaintiffs, former prisoners, allege that the companies directed and participated in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, sexual assault, as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at Abu Ghraib prison. The case is still pending.
