Add Flight 149: Hostage of Warfare to your watchlist
On 1 August 1990, a British Airways aircraft left Heathrow sure for Kuala Lumpur. It by no means made it. Six months later, the shattered tail of the destroyed Boeing 747 sat on the runway at Kuwait airport. Its passengers and crew had suffered rapes, mock executions, assaults and close to hunger.
Flight 149 arrived in Kuwait to refuel after Iraq invaded the nation. The 367 passengers – together with 11 kids – and 18 crew had been taken at gunpoint by Iraqi troopers, despatched to camps, navy bases, dams, nuclear and chemical amenities and used as human shields to forestall the US-led coalition bombing these targets.
Many by no means recovered from the trauma. “It nonetheless haunts us. It’s there every single day. You get flashbacks and moments of absolute terror and get up in the night time pondering you might be nonetheless there,” New Zealand passenger Daphne Halkyard instructed me.
Now the passengers and crew are suing the UK authorities and British Airways, claiming the flight was allowed to land, regardless of warnings, as a result of there was a secret intelligence crew on board. The federal government and the airline are contesting the declare and deny any accountability.
Briton Jennifer Chappell was a vivid, assured 12-year-old travelling together with her brother and oldsters when she was taken hostage; she had her thirteenth birthday in captivity. In the Sky documentary she accuses the authorities of delivering her and the different hostages into the palms of Saddam Hussein. The trauma ruined her life. She was robbed of her childhood and sense of belief and he or she’s nonetheless in counselling. Her reminiscences embody witnessing a taking pictures, residing in appalling circumstances with little meals and being pushed into the desert fearing she and her household could be shot. Starvation was a standard expertise for the human shields. Some passengers ended up consuming the leg of a giraffe from an area zoo.
For greater than 30 years, I’ve been investigating the story for my e book, The Secret Historical past of Flight 149, and the Sky documentary, each of which characteristic survivors’ gruelling tales. I’ve encountered a number of makes an attempt to forestall the reality popping out, together with threats and disinformation.
After three a long time of denial, the authorities has admitted that there may need been navy personnel on board. In 1992, then Prime Minister John Main acknowledged in writing that there have been none on the flight. However in a letter filed this yr in defence of the declare, authorities legal professionals now say: “It can’t be excluded that as but unidentified navy or navy intelligence personnel had been on BA149 by coincidence.”
New proof consists of that of Mohammad Al-Dossari, the head of safety at Kuwait airport when the aircraft landed. “We heard from our safety contacts that secret intelligence brokers had been on board the British airplane,” he reveals in the documentary. “These passengers had been used like chess items.”
In 1990, Margaret Thatcher instructed Parliament that the aircraft landed earlier than the invasion of Kuwait began. The federal government lastly admitted the reality in 2021 – that BA149 was nonetheless in the air, over an hour’s flying time from Kuwait, when the Iraqis invaded.
I’ve talked to these concerned in the mission who confirmed the secret crew bought on board whereas the aircraft was delayed at Heathrow. British Airways continues to deny this group boarded, despite the fact that this was confirmed by BA crew and their arrival on board was witnessed by a lot of the passengers.
On 28 August 1990 the ladies and kids amongst the hostages had been allowed to depart Kuwait and the remaining males had been dwelling by mid-December. The 747 was blown up on the Kuwait airport runway – the story of who did that deserves its personal chapter.
The hostages deserve compensation for his or her ordeal and to be instructed why they landed in a warfare zone. Passenger Paul Dieppe, from Bristol, put it greatest when he instructed me he wished somebody from BA or the authorities to knock on the door, sit him down and say: “That is what we did. That is the way it occurred.”
