British Airways (BA) passengers and crew taken hostage in Kuwait and used as human shields during Saddam Hussein’s invasion are suing the airline and the UK government.
The claimants, who were subjected to torture, including mock executions, say they have evidence that BA and the government knew the invasion had taken place hours before the plane landed in Kuwait. They also claim that the flight was used to secretly transport a special ops team for immediate and covert deployment to the battlefield, “regardless of the risk this posed to the civilians onboard”.
The BA149 flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, carrying 367 passengers and 18 crew members, arrived for a scheduled stopover at Kuwait International airport on 2 August 1990 as Iraqi armed forces were invading. It was the last commercial flight to do so. Those on board were held captive for up to five months, during which time they were subjected to torture, rape, mock executions, starvation and other abusive practices.
In 2021, after the release of documents to the National Archives that showed the British ambassador in Kuwait had warned the UK Foreign Office that the invasion was under way before flight BA149 landed, the then foreign secretary, Liz Truss, admitted that the government had covered up the warning for decades.
She said the warning was not passed on to BA and, in a reference to allegations regarding the presence of special forces, insisted that the government at the time “did not seek to exploit the flight in any way by any means whatsoever”.
However, lawyers for the claimants say BA did know of the invasion and a covert special ops team was on board.
Nicola Dowling, 56, a member of cabin crew on flight BA149 who spent about two months in Kuwait, during which time she was deployed as a human shield, said: “Not being believed and denied justice all these years has been hideous. It was all very well for [Margaret] Thatcher to say Saddam Hussein is hiding behind women and children. She bloody well sent us in there, presented us to him on a plate for him to use. She was as complicit in this as he was, as was BA.”
Dowling, who had been working for BA for 18 months at the time and turned 23 while in Kuwait, told of the moment she thought she was going to die, when being transported to the IBI camp in Fahaheel to be deployed as a human shield.
“They stopped in the middle of a desert and all the soldiers in the bus surrounded our bus and pointed their rifles at the windows and you could have heard a pin drop,” said Dowling, who lives in Surrey. “All the babies stopped crying and the kids stopped wailing and we thought we were going to be shot. We thought this was a start of reprisals, but we weren’t [shot]. And I don’t know to this day why they stopped in the middle of the desert with their rifles cocked at us.”
She described conditions at the IBI camp, where British expats were also being held, as “inhumane” and “hideous”, with overflowing excrement everywhere, limited running water and food, and frequent outbreaks of dysentery. She said her late ex-RAF father was so concerned about her that he wrote to Thatcher asking if he could swap places.
Dowling said BA’s response when she was released was “appalling”. She said she was pressed to return to work as soon as possible because of a shortage of available cabin crew and to resume flying to the Middle East, despite her pleas not to be sent back there.
She said she was threatened with the sack if she did not comply, so went back to the region once a month for the next 15 years, Like many of her colleagues on BA149, she retired with a medical pension.
“It was just torturous,” she said. “In the end I was just broken. I was a broken shell.”
Dowling said the claim for negligence and joint misfeasance in public office, brought by 95 people against the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence and BA, was an attempt to “hold the buggers to account. It’s impacted my life hugely.”
Matthew Jury, the managing partner of McCue Jury & Partners LLP, which is acting for the claimants, said: “The victims and survivors of flight BA149 deserve justice for being treated as disposable collateral. HMG [her majesty’s government] and BA watched on as children were paraded as human shields by a ruthless dictator, yet they did and admitted nothing. There must be closure and accountability to erase this shameful stain on the UK’s conscience.”
A coalition of US-led forces liberated Kuwait in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, also known as the first Gulf war.
BA and the government have been approached for comment.