Editorial

Getting to the Bottom of the Air India Disaster

The acquittal last week of two of the suspects in the bombing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985 leaves serious questions about who was behind this act of terrorism and what were their aims. It also leaves the families of the victims with no answers. From the beginning, the bombing was attributed to Sikh separatists as revenge for the 1984 storming of the Sikh Golden Temple by the Indian army and the murder of a Sikh religious leader.

Air India Flight 182 came apart in the air off the coast of Ireland and crashed into the sea, killing 329 people. Less than an hour later, a bomb blew up in Narita Airport in Japan, killing two baggage handlers. Evidence showed that both bombs were supposed to explode in Air India cargo holds while the planes were on the ground. However, Flight 182 was late in leaving Toronto and the bomb in Narita exploded before it could be loaded onto an Air India plane. The unexpected loss of lives made it impossible for any group to claim responsibility for the attack.

The main suspect in the bombings was Talwinder Singh Parmar, the leader of the Babbar Khalsa, one of the main Sikh separatist groups. Both CSIS and the RCMP claimed at the time that the act had likely been planned by Indian intelligence forces as a method of destroying the Khalistan movement for an independent Sikh homeland. The RCMP openly accused Mr. Parmar of being an agent of the Indian government, while CSIS apparently held the same view privately. There is also extensive evidence that the Israeli Mossad secret service was working with elements within the Khalistan movement in order to destabilize the Indian government and pressure it into dropping its official support for the Palestine Liberation Organization. The U.S. CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service also supported the Khalistan movement for their own reasons. Although Parmar was never charged in connection with the Air India disaster, one of his associates in B.C. admitted that he had provided Parmar and another man with materials to build a bomb. Parmar was reportedly killed in 1992 by Indian forces while he was conducting a raid from Pakistan.

There have been constant rumours that, at the highest levels, CSIS was actively involved in covering up for those responsible for the attack. These suspicions were further fueled during the course of the most recent trial when it was revealed that CSIS had destroyed crucial wiretap evidence. It also emerged that CSIS had an informant inside the organization planning the bombing and advised him to get out days before the attack took place because something big was about to happen. CSIS agents also had Parmar and his associates under surveillance while they detonated a test bomb in rural B.C. In other words, there is significant evidence that CSIS knew that some kind of terrorist attack was about to take place, but did nothing to stop it. Neither CSIS nor the Canadian government has ever explained why it took no measures to prevent a potential terrorist attack when it was in possession of such information.

Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, who served as Canada’s Minister of Justice during much of the most recent trial, was quick to dismiss demands for an official inquiry into the Air India disaster. She claimed that all of the internal problems of CSIS have been sorted out and that a public inquiry would serve no purpose. However, the families of the victims are not satisfied with this response. They still want to know who was behind this terrorist act and why the Canadian security forces have failed so spectacularly in bringing the criminals to justice. Since the justice system has also failed to provide these answers, they consider it the duty of the Canadian government to convene an inquiry.

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