"...which proves that the Indian government itself carried out the bombing. "
Yea, right.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/may/01ai.htm
AI blast: Canadian authorities were warned
Ajit Jain in Toronto
May 01, 2007 02:24 IST Last Updated: May 01, 2007 06:10 IST Canadian authorities were warned about a plot “to strike at the government of India” for its operations in the Golden Temple in Amritsar before the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people, a former police officer told the Air India Judicial Commission on Monday. Rick Crook, former constable with the Vancouver Police, had a sickening feeling after hearing about the tragic bombing of Air India in which all 329 people died.
A British Columbian man, Harmail Singh Grewal had told Crook about a plot to blow up two Air India planes.
As the Air India public inquiry resumed its hearings on Monday in Ottawa, Crook testified how Grewal seemed willing to tell police who was behind the terrorist plot, but his lawyer at the time, George Angelomatis, prevented him from doing so unless a deal was reached.
A partial script of Grewal’s conversation with police months before Air India flight 182 was blown out of the sky was reportedly released on Monday.
“Air India is state-controlled and, Indira Gandhi, they’re trying to get back at Indira Gandhi by bombing an Air India plane,” Grewal reportedly told Crook. “No Sikhs are traveling on Air India, they feel it will strike at the government.”
Grewal also reportedly told the police how meetings had taken place in Lower Mainland restaurant in September or early October 1984 to discuss the plot and that some had already exchanged hands.
He took the information provided very seriously ‘...because of the magnitude of what he was talking about,’ Crook told Justice John Major, who’s chairing the Air India Inquiry.”
So, he prepared a report and sent it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. There’s nothing more he could do, as he was merely a constable with the municipal police, he said in his testimony.
When the Air India plane exploded in June 1985, and within an hour of another bomb targeting Air India blowing up at Narita Airport, Crook felt sick. “It was a sickening feeling to realise in all likelihood it was something you had spoken of eight months previously,” Crook told this reporter.
“It was a bizarre concept to grasp,” he’s quoted in Vancouver Sun as saying. “And again it is within the benefit of hindsight that we take a look back and say why didn’t we realise it, but you know we are talking pre-9/11 and all the concerns we know have about our security.
“It was a different time and place and it was unbelievable to consider that someone would be contemplating a monumental disaster such as Air India.”
The hearings continue with Don McLean, formerly of the Vancouver Police, as the next witness.
Prosecutors blamed radical orthodox Sikh immigrants to Canada, saying the bombing was payback for the Indian government’s 1984 operations at the Golden Temple.
But the only person jailed over the airline attack was bomb-maker Inderjit Singh Reyat, who now faces perjury charges over his testimony at the trial of two men acquitted in the plot in 2005.
The alleged mastermind of the plot, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was killed in a police shootout in India in 1992.
According to reports, other warnings came from the Indian government and Air India itself, which told Canada’s federal police three weeks before the bombing that Sikh extremists in Canada were planning to bomb Air India flights.
The inquiry heard three weeks of emotional testimony last fall from the victims’ families recounting their personal ordeals and frustrations over the last two decades. But there have been hardly any hearings since then on the details of what happened.
Most of the delay can be attributed to haggling between commission counsel and lawyers for the federal government over how much of the documentary trail and oral testimony from here on will be public and how much will remain behind closed doors for reasons of national security.
(With PTI Inputs)
What Rajiv Gandhi told Canada PM after A-I blast
May 03, 2007 09:54 IST
In a phone call just after the bombing of the Air India plane in 1985, then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had asked his Canadian counterpart why all the baggage on the flight was not removed and rechecked in Montreal when three pieces were found to be suspicious.
Gandhi had suggested to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that Canada had breached international procedures by not re-screening the luggage on Flight 182.
Details of the emotionally-charged exchange were revealed on Wednesday in declassified government documents released at the judicial inquiry probing the June 23, 1985 bombing that killed 329 and a blast the same day at Tokyo’s Narita Airport that killed two.
A June 27 briefing document about the call says: ‘Overall impression was that Gandhi was highly excited, perturbed and concerned, but highly appreciative of the call.’
‘After Candian PM related his sympathies and condolences, Gandhi said he understood three suitcases had been pulled from Air India flight in Montreal and his understanding was that when such a thing happened, it was standard (international) practise that all suitcases would be searched, but this had not been done in this case,’ the document says.
‘Our PM did not comment directly on this but went on to say that in response to Indian requests, we had made every effort to ensure safety of Indian diplomatic personnel and premises in Canada. We would redouble our protective efforts and prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone involved in illegal action,’ National Post reported, quoting the documents.
The briefing note says Gandhi had already heard of the Narita bombing as well and the two prime ministers agreed it looked like there was a sinister connection. The fact that Mulroney first called Gandhi to express condolences on the loss of life on the plane when most of the passengers were Canadians has long been criticised.
But the intimate details of the conversation between the two former prime ministers sheds much more light on the response to what at the time was an unprecedented act of terrorism.
The briefing says that while Gandhi, a trained commercial pilot, was not directly questioning Canadian security measures before the bombing, ‘it is clear this question is implied.’
The document says Mulroney asked staff to investigate Gandhi’s concerns about the baggage.
‘Mulroney has asked Canadian authorities for a full report and we will relay that to Indian authorities,’ says the memo, which was signed by an Ottawa official with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Another memo released at the inquiry describes a meeting on June 25, 1985 between Bartleman’s minister, Joe Clark, and S J S Chhatwal, then Indian High Commissioner in Canada, about the bombing.
At the meeting, Clark said ‘he had for some time been very concerned about some activities within the Indian ethnic community in Canada involving extremist elements,’ the document says.
‘Clark said that he had personally talked with the president of India about this issue at the time of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s funeral and had stressed the importance of counteracting extremism.’
The declassified memos, briefing notes and documents from both CSIS and the RCMP show that massive amounts of intelligence had been gathered for years before the bombings about plot mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar and Babbar Khalsa, the terrorist group he founded in 1978.
‘On date, 1984/04/07, at the height of the conflict in Punjab, the Babbar Khalsa threatened to kidnap or kill the Indian Consul General in Vancouver,’ a June 29, 1985, CSIS document says.
‘This telephone threat was also directed at members of the consul’s family. In 1981 and again in 1984, the Babbar Khalsa penned its name to threatening letters to the prime minister and other high officials in India. These letters were postmarked, Vancouver,’ the documents said.
Startling revelations have come out this week at the inquiry headed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major about repeated warnings made to law enforcement agencies about bomb plots against Air India.
Equally startling have been repeated examples of warnings not being shared between agencies or different levels of government.
No witnesses testified on Wednesday, but Ontario Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman will take the stand when the inquiry resumes on Friday. At the time of the bombing, he was in charge of the intelligence analysis and security branch of the Department of External Affairs.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kanishka_Rajiv_Gandhi_had_questioned_security_lapses/articleshow/1994732.cms Kanishka: Rajiv Gandhi had questioned security lapses
[3 May, 2007 l 0935 hrs IST PTI]
TORONTO: In a phone call just after the bombing of the Air India plane in 1985, the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had asked his Canadian counterpart Brian Mulroney why all the baggage on the flight was not removed and re-checked in Montreal when three pieces were found to be suspicious.
Gandhi, a trained commercial pilot himself, had suggested to the Canadian PM
that Canada had breachedinternational procedures by not re-screening
the entire luggage on Flight 182.
Details of the emotionally charged exchange were revealed on Wednesday in declassified government documents released at the judicial inquiry probing the June 23, 1985 bombing that killed 329 people. A blast on the same day at Tokyo’s Narita Airport killed two.
A June 27 briefing document about the call says: “Overall impression was that Gandhi was highly excited, perturbed and concerned, but highly appreciative of the call.”
“After our PM related his sympathies and condolences, Gandhi said he understood three suitcases had been pulled from Air India flight in Montreal and his understanding was that when such a thing happened, it was standard [international] practice that all suitcases would be searched, but this had not been done in this case,” the document says.
“Our PM did not comment directly on this but went on to say that in response to Indian requests, we had made every effort to ensure safety of Indian diplomatic personnel and premises in Canada. We would redouble our protective efforts and prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone involved in illegal action,” National Post reported, quoting the documents.
The briefing note says Gandhi had already heard of the Narita bombing as well and the two prime ministers agreed it looked like there was a sinister connection.
The fact Mulroney first called Gandhi to express condolences on the loss of life on the plane when most of the passengers were Canadians has long been criticised.
But the intimate details of the conversation between the two former prime ministers sheds much more light on the response to what at the time was an unprecedented act of terrorism.
The briefing says that while Gandhi, a trained commercial pilot, was not directly questioning Canadian security measures before the bombing, “it is clear this question is implied.”
The document says Mulroney asked the staff to investigate Gandhi’s concerns about the baggage.
“Mulroney has asked Canadian authorities for a full report and we will relay that to Indian authorities,” says the memo, which was signed by an Ottawa official with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Another memo released at the inquiry describes a meeting on June 25, 1985 between Bartleman’s minister, Joe Clark, and S J S Chhatwal, the then Indian High Commissioner in Canada, about the bombing.
At the meeting, Clark said “he had for some time been very concerned about some activities within the Indian ethnic community in Canada involving extremist elements,” the document says.
“Clark said that he had personally talked with the President of India about this issue at the time of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s funeral and had stressed the importance of counteracting extremism.”