Lawsuit against airline and government

More than 30 years after they were taken hostage in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, passengers and crew members of a British Airways flight have sued the British government and the airline for damages. 94 of them have filed a civil suit at the High Court in London accusing the British government and British Airways of “deliberately endangering” civilians, the law firm McCue Jury & Partners said on Monday.

All of the plaintiffs had “suffered severe physical and psychological damage during their ordeal, the consequences of which are still felt today,” it said in its justification. The passengers of flight BA 149 were captured in Kuwait on August 2, 1990, on their way from London to Kuala Lumpur. Only a few hours earlier, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein’s troops had invaded the Gulf state. Some of the 367 passengers and crew members spent more than four months in captivity and were used by Hussein as human shields.

The plaintiffs accuse London and British Airways of having been informed of a possible Iraqi invasion but allowing the plane to land anyway. They used the flight to “deploy a covert special operations team in occupied Kuwait” that was on board.

“We were not treated as citizens, but as expendable henchmen for commercial and political purposes,” said one of the plaintiffs. Responsibility had been covered up and blatantly denied for years. He hoped that a victory in court would help “restore trust in our political and legal process.”

British government files released in November 2021 revealed that the British ambassador to Kuwait informed London of a possible Iraqi invasion on the night of August 2, 1990. However, the message was not passed on to British Airways.

In an earlier lawsuit, the passengers had accused London of knowingly endangering their safety. The British government allegedly used the flight to deploy undercover agents and delayed takeoff to allow them to board. The then Foreign Secretary Liz Truss denied this, as did previous British governments.

The airline BA has always denied the accusations of negligence, conspiracy and cover-up. The findings confirmed “that British Airways was not warned of the invasion,” the company said last year. The airline did not initially respond to the renewed accusations when asked by the AFP news agency.

The law firm McCue Jury & Partners announced the lawsuit in September. The lawyers explained at the time that the hostages “could claim an estimated average of 170,000 pounds (around 200,000 euros) per person in compensation.” In 2003, a French court had already ordered British Airways to pay 1.67 million euros to the French hostages on the plane on the grounds that the airline had “failed to meet its obligations” to land the plane.