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Arrests Promised In Air-India Blast Case

A P Kamath

For more than a year Dave Hayer, son of the slain Tara Singh Hayer, India-Canadian Times publisher, has been saying that if his father's murderers were brought to justice, many other acts of terrorism in Canada would come to light too.

The announcement last week that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are about to charge six suspects in the Air-India explosion 14 years ago excites Hayer, but he is also afraid that like other similar announcements, this one too would remain an unfulfilled promise.

Dave Hayer is convinced that the same fundamentalists who were behind his father's last year and an attack on him several years ago were also behind the Air-India explosion over the Atlantic, the biggest terrorist act in Canadian history.

On June 23, 1985, a bomb planted in a luggage hold of Air-India Flight 182 exploded over the north Atlantic off the coast of Ireland on its way from Canada to India. The explosion killed 329 people, most of them Canadian.

This week Canadian newspapers said the investigation that has cost over Canadian $ 26 million could result in suspects being charged. Five years ago, as patience over the investigation running out, RCMP announced a $ 1 million award leading to the arrest and conviction of suspect(s). It is not known if a tip showed the way to the six suspects.

Meanwhile, Hayer and many other moderate Indian Canadians wonder if the RCMP will really announce something meaningful or if the investigation will continue indefinitely.

The RCMP has repeatedly said it is convinced that the bombing was planned and organized in Canada and the individuals responsible are still residing there. Although the identities of these individuals were known to the police, there is still not enough evidence to bring these individuals to justice, RCMP sources said.

The only arrest the RCMP made related to a suitcase unloaded from Canadian Airlines flight at Narita airport on the same day as the Air-India explosion. The suitcase, bound for an Air-India flight, exploded, killing two baggage handlers and injuring others. Inderjit Singh Reyat, who is serving a 10-year-sentence for his role in the Narita explosion, has been denied parole several times. He says RCMP investigators are putting pressure on him to reveal the names of other "conspirators".

Reyat maintains his innocence but Canadian investigators believe he either built that bomb or helped others build it.

Reyat insists he only bought a stereo tuner that held the Narita bomb for a man whose name he was never told.

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail ran a story this week saying that the RCMP privately blame CSIS, the Canadian spy agency, for delaying and scuttling the evidence in the Air-India explosion. The long-standing feud between the agencies resurfaced this week with the publication of the front-page article.

The RCMP suggests the probe was crippled when CSIS erased scores of surveillance tapes in 1985.

"They are trying to justify their failure by pegging it on us," a CSIS insider said of the RCMP.

The tapes may have provided some evidence, an RCMP officer added, but hastened to add that it would be only one piece in the enormous investigative work done by police over 14 years. The taped material "would not be a make-it-or-break-it piece of evidence," he said.

Yet the destruction of the tapes remains a point of resentment between the two bodies, intelligence sources say.

The CSIS reportedly erased all but 54 of 210 tapes made of phone conversations involving Sikh militants, including prime bombing suspect Talwinder Singh Parmar, who died in a police shutout in India eight years ago.

There have been lingering suspicions that animosity between the two agencies also prevented the exchange of vital information before and after the disaster, the Globe and Mail said.

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