They filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in April 2002 against the Republic of Iraq, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Saddam Hussein for compensatory and punitive damages. The causes of action listed in the complain included common law torts, and while normally, the FSIA granted foreign states immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts, there had been a "terrorism exception" (28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7)) passed in 1996, which took away sovereign immunity from state sponsors of terror. Iraq had been designated a state sponsor of terror in 1990 after it had invaded Kuwait, so the complaint argued that it was liable.