Court Awards US Victims More Than $6 Billion For 1989 Lockerbie Bombing

A federal judge has ordered the Government of Libya and six of its officials to pay a total of approximately $6 billion in damages arising from the mid-air suitcase bombing of a French-operated UTA Flight 772, DC-10 wide-body jet.

The 1989 attack killed 170 people from Europe, Africa and the United States and was one of the deadliest terrorist events in commercial aviation history before September 11, 2001. It came only nine months after a similar suitcase bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

The case stems from the September 19, 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772, which was flying from N’djamena, Chad to Paris, France when a suitcase bomb exploded in the cargo hold at an altitude of 35,000 feet. The aircraft crashed into the Tenere Desert in northeastern Niger, killing all 170 passengers and crew, including seven Americans. Represented by the Washington law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, the families of the Americans brought suit in federal court, along with the U.S. firm that owned the aircraft, pursuant to a 1996 law that stripped terrorist states such as Libya of their immunity from suit. Among the seven Americans killed on the flight was Bonnie Pugh, the wife of then U.S. Ambassador to Chad, Robert Pugh.

Stuart H. Newberger, the lead lawyer for the victim families and a senior partner at Crowell & Moring, said, “This award proves that the rule of law will always prevail over state-sponsored terrorism. At the end of the day, all 170 victims of UTA Flight 772 will be remembered and honored by this decision. Indeed, it is because of rulings like this that Libya has rejected terrorism and re-joined the civilized nations of the world.”

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