Barry Manners says when British Airways crew discovered his partner had Aids they were both forced out of hotel where other hostages were being held. A man who was among British Airways passengers and crew taken hostage in Kuwait and used as human shields during Saddam Hussein’s invasion and who are suing the airline said his ordeal was made worse by its staff’s homophobia.
![[Barry Manners being held hostage, aged 24]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/44ba87e3754c2efed5408d11c23608c0089c4289/0_38_1242_745/master/1242.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
On Friday, more than 100 claimants served legal papers on BA and the government, who they say both knew the invasion had taken place hours before flight BA149 landed in Kuwait in 1990. Barry Manners, then 24, said the attitude of BA staff, who took charge at the hotel where people were held, changed when they discovered that his partner, Anthony Yong, had Aids after he requested medication.
He said they told them to stay in the room to avoid contaminating others and talked about transferring Yong to the local infectious disease hospital, despite the risk this would pose to him with his compromised immune system. “They dropped a litre of disinfectant outside the room for us to disinfect the room, and food was brought up,” said the 58-year-old. “We had strict instructions that when they would knock on the door three times or something, a tray of food would be left. We then had to wait five minutes so that they could clear the corridor.
“Do you know [the TV Aids drama] 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. Well, that’s where we were, but seven years later, at the behest of an organisation that had had dozens, at least, of their own personnel who’d actually become ill with that very disease. I was just astonished that these attitudes existed – it was like being back in the middle ages.”.
