LONDON: Passengers and staff of a British Airways flight who were carried prisoner in Kuwait in 1990 have projected lawful act against the UK government and the airline, a law firm claimed on Monday, reported by Dawn News.
Passengers on the BA flight were carried off the Kuala Lumpur-bound plane when it disembarked in Kuwait on Aug 2 that year, hours after Iraq attacked the nation.
Few of the 367 passengers and staff spent more than four months in detention, involved in human protection against the Western invasion of Iraqi armies during the first Gulf War in 1991.
McCue Jury & Partners claimed that ninety-four out of 367 have pointed a civil declaration at the High Court in London, blaming Britain’s management and BA for “deliberately endangering” civilians.
“All of the claimants suffered severe physical and psychiatric harm during their ordeal, the consequences of which are still felt today,” the ordinance corporation counted.
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The act differs in that the British administration and the airline “knew the invasion had started”, but permitted the flight to disembark anyhow.
They accomplished so because the flight was employed to “insert a covert special ops team into Kuwait”, the firm counted further.
Barry Manners, who was on the flight and is participating in the lawsuit, claimed that “We were not treated as citizens but as expendable pawns for commercial and political gain.”
“A victory over years of cover-up and bare-faced denial will help restore trust in our political and judicial process,” he counted. British administration files unleashed in Nov 2021 announced that the UK envoy to Kuwait had announced to London about statements of an Iraqi attack before the flight disembarked, but the statement was not sent on to BA.
There had been some lawsuits, rejected by the administration, that London deliberately put passengers at stake by operating the flight to deploy confidential detectives and postponing liftoff to permit them to panel. The UK administration denied to remark on continuing lawful issues.
British Airways has consistently rejected indictments of delinquency, collaboration and a cover-up. The airline did not answer a plea for remark, but it articulated the previous year that the documents dismissed in 2021 “confirmed British Airways was not warned about the invasion”.
McCue Jury & Partners had asserted in September its discretion to point the case, expressing then that the prisoners “may claim an estimated average of 170,000 pounds ($213,000) each in damages”.
In 2003, a French court mandated BA to expend 1.67 million euros to the flight’s French prisoners, articulating it had “seriously failed in its obligations” to them by anchoring the plane.
Published in Dawn
