Libra
In a dramatic testimony sometimes from behind curtains, witnesses testified recently that Canadian authorities had been informed about the plot to bomb an Air India plane. A key suspect in the bombing who was not of India descent (referred as person 1) and that a police informer of Indian descent (person 2) had provided Vancouver police and the RCMP with quite specific details about the plot to target an Air India flight in Oct'1984. Person 1 said he was promised payment of $200,000 to carry out the bomb plot, and also to assassinate then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. Extract from the transcript of the tape published in Candian newspapers tells of the chilling account of the events that preceded before the bombing.
In another stunning revelation, a former Quebec provincial police officer today said that the Air India bombing could have been prevented, if only he was given the chance to search the flight's baggage by sniffer dogs before it left Montreal's Mirabel Airport.
Serge Carignan told a public inquiry yesterday that he got a phone call at his home from his Surete Du Quebec supervisor, the night of June 22, 1985 the Saturday of the St. Jean Baptiste holiday and was told that the RCMP needed him and his dog Arko to fill in for their own absent canine team in search of a jumbo jet and its luggage. By the time he and his sniffer dog Arko arrived at Mirabel, the plane had already departed and his only task was to search three suspicious suitcases that had been pulled off and left behind which turned out to be harmless.
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A new twist in the Air India
By Goose Egg, June 6, 2007 at 11:04A new twist in the Air India enquiry commission: Justice John Major, head of enquiry has chastised Air India's lead counsel in Ontario for making critical remarks in the Toronto Star about the process and how she felt Air India was a scapegoat. Ray-Ellis said in the interview that Air India did not breach any law or policies and instead blamed the former Canadian Pacific airline for allowing the bag that contained the bomb on the plane in Vancouver without having a confirmed passenger. She told the Star that for almost 22 years Air India has been the face of public blame and responsibility and said "we don't need an inquiry to further exploit that." Major also took Air India to task for "unacceptable" efforts to keep some details of its security operations from public view. The airline may be a state-owned enterprise, he said, but that doesn't give it any legal exemption from public disclosure on grounds of national security or international relations. Carol McCall, one of Air India's legal team, said later that her client had finally agreed to allow background material on baggage-handling and other security measures to be made public in documents to be tabled later this week. What is Air-India trying to hide is the big question?
Further shocking revelations in Kanishka probe: 'DElay in wiretap proved costly": CSIS considered Talwinder Singh Parmar, a Canadian citizen, to be extremely dangerous and a terrorist threat and wanted a warrant to intercept all his telephone conversations in 1984, about nine months before the bombing. But the hurdle was created by the office of the solicitor general, the Progressive Conservative Minister respobsibke for the CSIS. It took five months from the timeCSIS initiated the process for a federal court to approve the wiretap warrant on Parmar, a costly delay. Also "Sikh extremism mushroomed far more quickly than Canadian security officials were prepared for-this was all so new to us", said Bob Burgoyne, who worked in so-called Sikh desk for the CSIS. In another testimony, Brian Simpson a former aircraft cleaner says he mananged to get aboard the ill fated Air-India jumbo jet in June 1985 without being challenged by any security personnel at the Toronto's Pearson airport, when he wasn't even wearing his uniform and security clearance badge. After hearing about the testimonies of heightened security at the airport in the weeks before the crash, he came forward and recalled security at the Airport "a joke", when he worked there. - Actually before the 9-11, the Canadian intelligence and security system was much like its laid back people, born and brought up in a cold country, sleep country and relatively a crime-free country, was not geared for such challenges and also overlooked security concerns despite specific warning against Air India reportedly since it involved minority Indian community.