POLITICS-CANADA: Questions Linger in Air India Bombing Saga

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Mar 23 2005 (IPS) - After two acquittals, a 20-year investigation and the destruction of key taped evidence by intelligence agents, calls are being made for a public inquiry into what has come to be known as Canada’s 9/11.

Leading this lobby have been the families of the 329 people who lost their lives following an explosion on Air India Flight 182 on Jun. 22, 1985 off the west coast of Ireland.

Two men accused of masterminding the crime were acquitted last week, with the judge in the case slamming Canadian intelligence agents for "unacceptable negligence" in erasing 246 wiretap tapes – some of which were never even listened to.

The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) maintains that it was standard procedure to destroy surveillance tapes after a certain period of time, unless there was a national security reason to preserve them.

There is also resentment that Canadian politicians, police and security officials in Ottawa made more of a domestic effort security-wise in response to the deaths of U.S. citizens at the hands of terrorists in September 2001 in New York and Washington than in investigating and prosecuting individuals responsible for planting the explosives on that flight two decades earlier, says Haroon Siddiqui, a columnist for the Toronto Star.

Even though it appeared that the planning and execution of the Air India bombing had occurred in Canada, the fact that it involved two groups of Canadians of Indian origin – separatist elements in the Sikh community who probably carried out the crime and the Hindus who were the primary victims – seemed to be missed by most Canadians at that time, including their own then prime minister Brian Mulroney.

Following the Air India bombing, Mulroney telegraphed to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi his condolences for the deaths of what he assumed to be Indian nationals, even though the 329 airline passengers were mostly citizens of Canada.

Tensions between Sikhs and Hindus in the Indian community have since subsided and South Asians in general have gained more political clout in Canada.

Now, the events of 1985 have returned to haunt them after Justice Ian Josephson dismissed all eight charges against two Canadians of Sikh background for their alleged role in the Air India bombing after weighing what he described as extremely weak evidence presented by the crown prosecution.

In his column, Siddiqui has written that Sikhs and Hindus share similar sentiments today. "Both communities agreed that Ottawa was botching the probe big time," he says.

Michael Code, the lawyer for Ajaib Singh Bagri, one of those acquitted, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that CSIS had wrecked early on what might have been a successful conviction against the "real culprits" behind the mass murder.

"The destruction of that evidence is a tremendous tragedy because it meant the prosecutors didn’t have a case that they should have had. That was available if all proper procedures had been followed. And instead, what they were left with was this very frail, fragile prosecution."

Code praised the actions of police officers in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the Air India investigation.

In the early 1980s, the RCMP became strictly a national police force after its security and intelligence division was turned into a separate agency – which became CSIS. Since then, turf battles have occurred between the two organisations, with successive CSIS directors maintaining that its mandate precludes providing evidence that could be used in a court proceeding against a person charged with a crime.

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan has continued to resist calls for a public inquiry, despite the judge’s comments about the actions of CSIS.

"My view is that the security agencies have captured the government, and so they are calling the shots," Toronto criminal lawyer Paul Copeland told IPS. He charged that CSIS is continuing to destroy evidence in cases involving the indefinite jailing of some men of Muslim origin because of their alleged links to Islamic terrorism – one of whom Copeland is currently representing.

With the passage of Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation following Sep. 11, 2001, the RCMP is back alongside CSIS in doing security and intelligence work.

Copeland is sceptical that the RCMP officers have the background and training to conduct intelligence gathering. He recalls how horror stories of RCMP spying against Quebec separatists and left-wing groups in the 1970s had been the original reason why CSIS was created in the first place.

"(The RCMP) were put back in, with nobody explaining why they needed to be back in," he said.

The turf battles between the RCMP and CSIS "that have featured so embarrassingly in the Air India fiasco" have ended in the post-9/11 world, "when integrated policing and intelligence to combat terrorism are the order of the day," says University of Victoria historian and author, Reg Whittaker.

"On the other hand, surveillance data is gathered for different purposes by the two agencies, and each are bound by different sets of rules regarding targeting approval, retention of data, etc. Much surveillance material is routinely erased as of no interest, and in any event, neither CSIS nor the RCMP are empowered to go on data fishing expeditions and keep whatever they want for as long as they want," he says.

"There are legal limits and privacy protection. In that sense, a repeat of the Air India tape destruction is certainly possible, but much less likely to occur now. However, human error is always possible."

But Toronto investigative journalist Andrew Mitrovika counters that the relationship between the RCMP and CSIS remains "tense as ever."

"Indeed, I have reported, and this has never been denied – that the two agencies refuse to conduct joint analysis projects," says Mitrovika, author of "Covert Entry: Spies, Lies and Crimes, Inside Canada’s Secret Service".

In the post-mortem commentary about the Air India investigation, much has been made of the fact that CSIS had nobody on its staff who could speak or understand Punjabi – the native language of Sikhs from India – and that none of its agents could understand or analyse the wiretapped conversations they had collected on the alleged conspirators.

CSIS has since made a strong effort to have a better representation "from all facets" of Canadian society, a spokesperson, Barbara Campion, told IPS.

She was unable to provide an ethnic breakdown, but said that as of March 2004, 9.4 percent of the agency’s employees are members of a visible or non-white minority. That is better than the Canadian government as a whole, where the percentage is eight percent.

"We have certainly received more resources, more money from government and part of that money has been allocated towards the hiring of more people because of the war on terror," she said.

The RCMP does not fare as well, with just over six percent of its officers coming from visible minorities, said spokesperson Corporal Danis Lafond.