Replies

Press Trust of India
Posted online: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 at 1531 hours IST

Vancouver, June 11: Canada's spy agency wiped out tape recordings of intercepted phone calls of the suspected mastermind in the 1985 bombing of Air India's Kanishka flight, which killed 329 people on board, even while it was negotiating with police over giving them access to the tapes.

Advertisement
Only 54 of about 300 tapes remained intact by the time senior Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) staff found out that CSIS was erasing them, court documents show shedding light on the controversial role of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service both before and after the bombings.

Vancouver business man Ripudaman Singh Malik and Kamloops mill worker Ajaib Singh Bagri face murder charges in the death of 329 people killed in the mid-air explosion.

Court documents have also shown that a senior CSIS official admitted one year after the bombings that its agents might have deterred the main players from carrying out the plot, a media report quoted the documents as stating.

Also, CSIS intercepted a conversation about explosives two days before the incident but did not alert the RCMP.

The documents indicate relations between the two agencies were so bad at the time they may have undermined efforts to pursue criminal charges in the months after the disaster, Canadian daily The Globe and Mail reported.

The RCMP learned that CSIS had been intercepting phone calls of Talwinder Singh Parmar, a prime suspect, on July 5, 1985, nearly two weeks after the bombings. Parmar was killed in India in 1992.

However, the RCMP was not told that CSIS had been intercepting Parmar's calls since March 27, 1985, almost three months before the crash.

In a memo to headquarters dated July 23, 1985, a senior RCMP officer complained of "great difficulty" in securing information from CSIS.

Another RCMP officer wrote in a memo about CSIS disclosing information on RCMP's Air-India investigation to India, sparking a caustic response from a top CSIS official.

"The nature and tone of your message does little to encourage a continued spirit of cooperation. . . . I have to make it perfectly clear to you that unwarranted attacks, direct or implied, on the ability and integrity of this service strain the spirit of cooperation to unnatural limits," CSIS Deputy Director A.M. Barr wrote back.

On Sept. 6, 1985, CSIS agreed to allow an RCMP officer to see intercept notes from June 4, 1985, onwards but a few days later CSIS once again revoked RCMP access, the report said.

After another attempt to work out a suitable arrangement, an RCMP officer was seconded to CSIS to deal with the tapes. On Sept. 30, 1985, the officer was told informally that some tapes had been erased.

Senior RCMP officers were informed of the erasures for the first time on Oct. 15, 1985, more than three months after learning that the tapes were made, court was told.

Testimony concerning the erasure of tape recordings and the acidic relations between CSIS and the RCMP was heard during pre-trial submissions last year. A court order prohibiting publication of the testimony was lifted recently.

Defence lawyer Michael Code, in a 186-page submission to court at that time, summarized the testimony and internal documents in a bid to show unacceptable negligence on the part of CSIS.

Code estimated that 97 tape recordings of intercepts before the crash were erased while negotiations were going on in July, August and September, 1985.