BA149 Hostage Crisis: Survivor Sues British Airways Over Alleged Homophobic Treatment
Hostage in Kuwait: Man Recalls BA Staff’s ‘It’s a Sin’-Era Homophobia During 1990 Invasion
More than 100 passengers and crew from British Airways Flight 149,taken hostage during Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait,are suing the airline and the UK government. They allege both entities knew about the invasion hours before the plane landed in Kuwait.
Barry Manners,then 24,vividly remembers the terror of being held captive. But for him, the ordeal was compounded by what he describes as homophobic treatment from BA staff at the hotel where hostages were confined.
Manners, who was traveling with his partner Anthony Yong, who had AIDS, says their situation changed dramatically when BA staff learned of Yong’s condition.
“They told us to stay in the room to avoid contaminating others and talked about transferring Anthony to the local infectious disease hospital,” Manners, now 58, recalls. “they dropped a liter of disinfectant outside the room for us to disinfect, and food was brought up. We had strict instructions that when they would knock on the door three times, a tray of food would be left. we then had to wait five minutes so that they could clear the corridor.”
Manners draws a chilling parallel between his experience and the 1980s AIDS crisis depicted in the acclaimed TV drama “It’s a Sin.”
“do you know ‘It’s a Sin’? I think it’s set in 1983-84,and those were the sorts of attitudes that you’d expected then,of people being isolated and chained to beds and God knows what,” he says. “Well, that’s where we were, but seven years later, at the behest of an organization that had had dozens, at least, of their own personnel who’d actually become ill with that very disease. I was just…”
His voice trails off, the memory of that harrowing time still raw.
The lawsuit, served on Friday, alleges that both BA and the UK government were aware of the impending invasion hours before Flight 149 landed in Kuwait. The claimants argue that this knowledge should have prompted the airline to divert the flight, preventing their traumatic experience.
This legal battle sheds light on a dark chapter in history, raising questions about corporate responsibility and the treatment of vulnerable individuals during times of crisis.
British Airways Passengers Held Hostage in kuwait During 1990 invasion
London, England – A harrowing tale of captivity and alleged government negligence has emerged from the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. David Manners, a British citizen, is speaking out about his and his partner’s terrifying ordeal as hostages in Kuwait City, claiming British Airways (BA) abandoned them and the UK government failed to warn them of the impending danger.
Manners and his partner, Yong, were on a BA flight to Malaysia when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Their flight, BA149, landed in Kuwait City just hours after the invasion began.
“It was like being back in the Middle Ages,” Manners recalled, describing the chaotic scene at the hotel where they were initially confined. “We were astonished that these attitudes existed.”
After ten days, BA staff, alongside hotel management, attempted to forcibly remove Manners and Yong, claiming they were being moved to a local hospital. The couple refused, barricading themselves in their room with furniture. After a tense standoff, BA and the hotel relented, but rather relocated them to a makeshift building on the hotel grounds.
“We were basically expelled from the hotel,” saeid Manners, a district councillor in Kent. “But we’re then near the beach, in a war zone. There’s anti-aircraft type, heavy-calibre machine-guns lined up along the coast that were firing off at night, so you just feel you’ve got ordnance going off almost next door.”
manners described the constant fear of conscript soldiers, armed with Kalashnikovs, scavenging for food in their makeshift accommodation.
After weeks of confinement, Yong managed to escape Kuwait overland, posing as an Indian citizen with temporary travel documents obtained through bribery. Manners, meanwhile, was taken to Baghdad and held as a human shield at a hydroelectric plant for three months.
Upon his release and reunion with Yong in England,Manners was shocked by his partner’s deteriorated condition. “He looked like he’d just been liberated from Belsen [concentration camp],” Manners said. Yong died 15 months later, never receiving any contact from BA.”I’m still angry,” said Manners. “The way we were treated was … particularly cruel and unneeded. It was ignorance.It almost certainly hastened his demise.”
In 2021, then-Foreign Secretary Liz Truss admitted the government had concealed a warning from the British ambassador in Kuwait about the imminent invasion, which was not relayed to BA.
Matthew Jury, representing the claimants in a legal case against BA and the UK government, stated, “It is indeed never excusable for a government to use citizens as pawns in a military operation. It’s equally shocking that one of the UK’s flagship companies could be complicit in the same.”
Both BA and the UK government declined to comment on the allegations.
BA Hostage Describes “It’s a Sin”-Era Homophobia During 1990 Kuwait Invasion
NewsDirectory3.com – over three decades after the terrifying ordeal of being held hostage during Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Barry Manners, a passenger on British Airways Flight 149, revisits the trauma, revealing a deeply troubling aspect of his captivity.
Manners, now 58, was traveling with his partner Anthony Yong, who was living with AIDS. He alleges that after BA staff learned of Yong’s condition, they were subjected to deeply disturbing homophobic treatment while confined in a Kuwait hotel with other hostages.
“They told us to stay in the room to avoid contaminating others and talked about transferring Anthony to the local infectious disease hospital,” Manners recalls. “They dropped a liter of disinfectant outside the room for us to disinfect, and food was brought up. We had strict instructions that when they would knock on the door three times, a tray of food would be left. We then had to wait five minutes so that they could clear the corridor.”
Manners draws a chilling parallel between his experience and the depiction of the 1980s AIDS crisis in the acclaimed British TV drama “It’s a Sin”. He highlights the fear and prejudice surrounding AIDS at the time, which, according to his account, manifested in discriminatory treatment from BA personnel.
this revelation comes amidst a lawsuit filed by over 100 passengers and crew from BA Flight 149 against the airline and the UK government. They allege both entities were aware of the imminent invasion hours before the plane landed in Kuwait.
While the primary focus of the lawsuit revolves around the handling of pre-invasion intelligence,Manners’ account sheds light on another,equally disturbing dimension of the hostage situation – the potential for discrimination and prejudice to compound the trauma experienced by passengers.
NewsDirectory3.com will continue to monitor developments in this case.