BA must pay £1m to hostages

13 April 2012

A FRENCH court today ordered British Airways to pay e1.67m (£1.1m) to seven passengers taken hostage by invading Iraqi forces when their flight landed in Kuwait in 1990, allegedly to let off a group of British SAS commandos.

The verdict was in line with an 1995 French court decision in which the British flag-carrier was told to pay e3.8m to 65 other passengers - French citizens or residents - who were also on board.

The seven plaintiffs awarded compensation, who are also all French citizens or residents, initiated their separate lawsuit on the grounds that BA had put them in harm's way by making their flight from London to Kuala Lumpur stop in Kuwait City on Aug 2 1990 - the day Iraq invaded its southern neighbour.

They claimed the landing had been made to drop off the SAS commandos, who they said had boarded the plane in London after the flight was delayed for nearly two hours.

The British government and British Airways have persistently denied the presence of SAS soldiers on the flight.

None of the court cases lodged outside of France have succeeded against British Airways. Britons on the flight had their claims rejected in a House of Lords ruling that cleared British Airways of any responsibility, while US lawsuits also failed.

The airline itself has maintained that the hostage-taking was 'an act of war' that could not have been foreseen, and has called suggestions that it endangered passengers' lives 'preposterous'.

Flight BA149, carrying 310 passengers and 82 BA employees, landed at Kuwait City in the early hours of August 2, 1990 on what BA says was a scheduled stop-over.

The airport soon afterwards came under bombardment from Iraqi forces taking over the country and the aircraft was evacuated.

Those on board were taken hostage by the Iraqi military and some spent more than five months as 'human shields' at Iraqi or Kuwaiti installations.

The Paris court that handed down its judgment noted that the British government had denied the existence of commandos on board the plane, but said: 'The reality of this assertion cannot be legally established.'

It added that because 'the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq seemed to have been highly predictable, BA, in deciding to maintain the stop-over, has no basis on which to invoke 'force majeur', and has therefore gravely failed in its obligations and must be ordered to provide compensation.'

In London, a British Airways spokeswoman said: 'We are surprised at the result and we will be exploring our options once we have studied the judgment.

'We have said throughout that while we have every sympathy with those taken hostage, what happened to them was a result of an act of war by Iraq which took the whole world by surprise. We could have not foreseen it, neither ourselves nor our insurers, and should not be held responsible for its consequences.'

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