After 50 years.. Libya takes legal action against Israel for shooting down its civilian plane in Sinai

Tripoli - Ofoq News - The Libyan embassy in the Kingdom of the Netherlands has officially notified the Registry of the International Court of Justice of Libya’s intention to file a lawsuit against Israel, against the backdrop of the downing of a Libyan Arab Airlines plane over the Sinai Peninsula on February 21, 1973, resulting in the deaths of 108 people.

The notification came in accordance with an official correspondence addressed by Libyan Ambassador Ziad Daghim to the Registrar of the Court in The Hague, dated October 7, 2026.

The correspondent explained that the Libyan move is based on what Tripoli describes as Israel’s violation of its obligations under the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation, signed on September 23, 1971, in addition to other rules of international law.

The Libyan embassy based its justification for this step on recent developments, including the lifting of secrecy in 2023 of a set of minutes of Israeli Cabinet meetings contemporaneous with the incident, considering that they contain evidence relevant to proving a violation of legal obligations towards Libya.

The embassy requested that the correspondence be registered as an official notification of the Libyan state’s intention to initiate proceedings before the court, noting that Libya intends to submit a request to file a lawsuit later based on Article 40, first paragraph of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

According to the document, the anticipated request will include defining the subject of the dispute, the legal foundations upon which Libya relies to prove the court’s jurisdiction, the relevant facts, and the international provisions that it says Israel has violated, as well as the demands that Libya will submit.

This step does not mean that the court has begun examining the case or has decided its jurisdiction over it, as Libya, according to the correspondence, is still in the process of submitting the official request that will determine the details of the case and its legal justifications, while the court’s jurisdiction remains subject to the rules regulating its jurisdiction.

At the conclusion of the correspondence, the embassy confirmed that the reference to Israel in the document is for the purposes of introducing the facts and legal procedures related to it, and does not represent the Libyan state’s recognition of Israel, nor a change in its declared position on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This move brings the issue of downing the civilian plane back to the international forefront more than five decades after the incident, and opens the door to a new legal path through which Libya seeks to present its demands before the international judiciary, amid anticipation of the next official steps and the availability of the necessary legal conditions to consider the lawsuit.