Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce the Justice for the Living victims of Lockerbie Act. This bill would create a process to seek justice for a group Pan American World Airways pilots who lost…
Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce the Justice for the Living victims of Lockerbie Act. This bill would create a process to seek justice for a group Pan American World Airways pilots who lost their careers and pensions following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the subsequent bankruptcy and closure of Pan Am.
On December 21, 1988, the State of Libya committed an infamous act of terror by bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 innocent civilians. Despite Pan Am's greatly improved financial position in 1988, the media coverage of the terrorist attack wreaked havoc on Pan Am sales leading to its bankruptcy in 1991.
In 2008, the U.S. entered into the U.S.-Libya Humanitarian Settlement Agreement, in which Libya paid $ 1.5 billion to settle claims by U.S. citizens for Libyan-sponsored terrorism. After payments by the State Department to families of death victims from Lockerbie and the La Belle Disco bombing in Germany, compensation to other victims was to be determined by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. The Commission could only consider further claims referred to it by the State Department.
One of these claimants was a group of senior Pan Am pilots, most of whom were veterans, who were over the age of 50 and lost and livelihoods when Pan Am went bankrupt and closed. Due to the federally required retirement age of 60 at that time, and the airline industry's seniority system, they were unable to get new pilot jobs with other airlines. Two of these pilots reside in Maine--Ron Fitch of Poland Spring and Schafer Bean of Diamond Cove--and I have heard their stories and their pleas for justice on behalf of their own families and the others who suffered as a result of Libya's acts of terrorism.
Mr. Fitch served nearly ten years in the Air Force and flew rescue helicopters during the Vietnam War. Mr. Bean served in the Navy where he was stationed at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station during the 1960's. Both of these veterans told me that lost their jobs, pensions, health care, and savings as a result of the Pan Am bombing.
This group's initial lawsuit against Libya, which had been joined with the families of those who died at
Lockerbie, was dismissed by the courts due to sovereign immunity. Following the 2008 settlement agreement with Libya, the group of pilots approached the State Department in 2009 seeking the necessary referral to have their claims heard by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. For more than four years the State Department failed to refer the group's claims to the Commission, but following bipartisan letters to then-Secretaries Clinton and Kerry signed by myself and more than 60 other members of Congress, the State Department finally referred the claims in 2013.
After an initial denial of claims in a preliminary ruling by the Commission in July 2016, the group of pilots was granted a hearing in December 2016. So many of the pilots and their families attended the hearing that it was moved to a U.S. District Court courtroom in Washington, D.C. Three senior Pan Am executives testified at the hearing, including the former Pan Am CEO, Thomas Plaskett; former Pan Am Senior Vice President for Finance, Ramesh Punwani; and former Pan Am Vice President of Strategic Planning, Peter Pappas. Each explained why the Lockerbie bombing and the subsequent media coverage directly caused the airline's collapse.
In January 2018, more than a year following that hearing, the Commission ruled against the pilots. Using an undefined standard of proof and applying international law, the Commission argued that Pan Am's demise was not caused by the Lockerbie bombing, contrary to the testimony of the former Pan Am executives themselves. The pilots' referred claim was the very last of the Libya claims adjudicated by the Commission, and the Libya settlement fund is now exhausted from the claims it approved prior to the final adjudication of the pilots' claims.
Mr. President, these terrorism victims were denied an opportunity to even make their case for four years by the Department of State, and when finally referred to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, they were forced to wait another three years for a preliminary ruling and another two years for a final decision, by which point the Commission had already awarded claims that essentially exhausted the settlement funds provided by Libya. That simply is not fair, and I believe these Mainers and other Americans deserve a quick and fair process to compensate them for their losses.
I urge my colleagues to join me in working toward justice for all of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing perpetrated by Libya.
