This was the initial 1993 civil lawsuit filed against the Government of Libya by a spouse of one of the victims of the 1998 terrorist bombing that claimed the lives of 270 people. The lawsuit was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on the basis of Libya’s soverign immunity in 1995, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the decision in 1996.
In the meantime Mark helped rewrite the Foreign Soverign Immunity Act which was modified in 1996 and stripped Libya of its immunity. Ultimately Mark represented approximately sixty family members of the victims in a new civil lawsuit in Rein et al. v. The Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya et al.
In 2003, the lawsuit was settled with Libya and by 2008 the families had received $10 million per victim.
Case Files
Opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (11/26/96)
Opinion of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (05/17/95)
Mark S. Zaid, P.C. 