WHY THE INQUIRY INTO AIR INDIA MUST CLARIFY T
Alexandre Popovic, 29.03.2006 16:24
Open letter to the federal minister of public safety regarding the necessity to examine the role of a CSIS informer in the bombing against the Air India Flight 182 in which 329 peoples died more than twenty years ago.
To the Honorable Stockwell Day,
Minister of Public Safety
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Montreal, March 21 2006
Subject: public inquiry on Air India
Attention Mr. Minister :
Your party decided to honor the electoral promise engagement of holding a public inquiry into the Air India case. Your colleague, Justice Minister Vic Toews, gave you the task of fixing the framework and timeline of the public inquiry into this dramatic event that is now nearly twenty-one years old.
Despite the un-precedent scope of this tragedy, I can unfortunately testify, to the fact that today in Montreal, many fellow citizens are still very much unaware of this horrible event. People seem to have forgotten that the Air India Flight 182 took off from the Mirabel airport (in the Montreal area) before exploding over the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of Ireland. There were 329 people on board. This includes 84 children younger than twelve years old. No one survived. All of this took place on June 23, 1985.
It was, at the time, the most murderous attack throughout the international history of civilian aviation during times of peace. Yet it took more than fifteen years before criminal charges were laid even though the identity of the group responsible for the attack was known to the authorities for quite some time. It was Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh fundamentalist group that was fighting for the creation of a Khalistan Republic, who were added to the terrorist entity’s list by the Canadian Liberal government in 2003.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, the man who built the bombs that exploded on June 23 1985, was a member of Babbar Khalsa. He has been in prison since 1988. In May 1991, Mr. Reyat was found guilty of double manslaughter in connection to a second bomb which went off at the Narita airport, in Japan, and which had been prepared for another Air India plane. This attack took place less than an hour before the explosion of the Air India Flight 182, on the other side of the world.
In February 2003, Mr. Reyat pleaded guilty to 329 counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to five years of prison, in exchange of his cooperation with the prosecution during the Air India mega-trial against two defendants, Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik. We know today that the prosecution didn’t get a good deal, since perjury charges were recently brought against Mr. Reyat for lying twenty-seven times during his testimony at the mega-trial. In other words, the Crown got fooled by the maker of the most deadly bomb ever made in Canadian history.
We know for quite a long time that Babbar Khalsa was under surveillance by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the weeks preceding the attack. Their leader, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was both under physical and electronic surveillance, as the authorities dreaded counter actions in response to the massacre that occurred at the Golden Temple in India one year earlier. And all this didn’t prevent the loss of 329 human lives.
And yet this was to be only the top layer of troubling surprises to unfold.
When the Air India mega-trial started up in 2003, the British Colombia Superior Court lifted the publishing ban on thousands of pages of RCMP documents. Following this disclosure, the Globe and Mail published in June 2003, a series of news articles revealing, for the first time, the possible involvement of a CSIS informant in the group responsible for the deadly attack. At that time, your colleagues from the now defunct Canadian Alliance stood in the House to ask the Liberal government to implement a royal commission of inquiry.
The fact that Babbar Khalsa was infiltrated by a mole shouldn’t be a subject of debate now. Why? Because a Crown prosecutor by the name of Diane Wiedemann, has already identified Surjan Singh Gill as an informer during a hearing at the British Columbia Superior Court, on June 20th 2003, as reported in a news article by the Canadian Press.
(CANADIAN PRESS, “Search warrants in Air India case show RCMP ready to charge 'informant'”, Camille Bains, June 20, 2003. See below)
When such things are disclosed by a member of the bar, never mind one who is acting on behalf for the general attorney of British Columbia, we are not dealing with some wild rumour or some speculative conspiracy theory! Needless to say, it’s quite regrettable that such a disturbing revelation went almost unnoticed.
Mr. Minister, the reason why I’m writing you, is to ask that you will make sure that the upcoming public inquiry does not overlook examining a particularly crucial aspect of what went wrong in the Air India fiasco: that is, the real role played by Surjan Singh Gill.
Mr. Gill was a pioneer in the Sikh separatist movement in Canada. In the early ‘80’s, he was the self-titled “ambassador” of the Khalistan Republic and was renting a small office in Vancouver that was deemed to be his “consulate”. In 1982, Mr. Gill published a 45-page pamphlet called « Case for Republic of Khalistan », in which he promoted the “symbolic” hijacking of Indian planes to advance the cause for a Sikh homeland, among other things. (GLOBE AND MAIL, “Suspected mole was self-appointed Khalistan envoy”, June 3, 2003.)
In 1984, Mr. Gill was also among the founding members of Babbar Khalsa and was one of the applicants incorporating it as a religious society. (R. v. Malik and Bagri, 2005 BCSC 350, paragraphe 203. URL: 
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/05/03/2005BCSC0350.htm)
Several elements lead us to believe that Mr. Gill played a part in the murderous plot that cost the lives of the passengers of Air India Flight 182. At least that’s what the RCMP investigators believe. During their investigation, the officers searched the house of M. Gill more than once, and interviewed him on twenty-four different occasions. (GLOBE AND MAIL, “CSIS ‘cover up’ alleged in Air-India plot”, June 2, 2003.)
Other police documents disclosed reveal that the RCMP had identified Surjan Gill as one of the six main suspects in the Air India Flight 182 blast. The investigators had established, thanks to phone tapping, that Mr. Gill attended several meetings with some of the leading conspirators in the weeks preceding the attack. Furthermore, intercepted phone conversations, during which the speakers were using a coded language, also led to believe that Mr. Gill was in possession of the plane tickets and the bombs a few days before the tragedy. (GLOBE AND MAIL, “Suspected CSIS mole carried Air-India bombs, Mountie said”, June 4 2003.)
Finally, three weeks before the deadly blast, Mr. Parmar and Mr. Reyat tested an explosive device in a wooded area of Vancouver Island. It was Mr. Gill who drove Mr. Parmar to the location before and after the blast. Two CSIS agents had also followed the suspects, but they mistakenly thought that the sound of the explosion was a firearm blast. Some of the evidence eventually recovered from the scene was used successfully to ensure a conviction against Mr. Reyat for the attack at the Narita airport. (R. v. Malik, Bagri and Reyat, 2002 BCSC 1731, paragraphe 25. URL: http://www.canlii.org/bc/cas/bcsc/2002/2002bcsc1731.html)
Then, on June 20th 1985, that is to say three days before the attack against Air India Flight 182, Surjan Gill made an unexpected about-turn and suddenly decided to sever all ties with Babbar Khalsa. Thus, Mr. Gill resigned as a member and a director of the so-called religious society. Just like that! After dedicating so much energy, after so many years for the Khalistan cause… Strange, isn’t it?
Mr. Gill was never charged, and never had to explain his actions before a court of justice. He left Canada in September 2000, just a few weeks before criminal accusations were brought against Mr. Bagri and Mr. Malik, the two individuals who underwent the lengthiest criminal trial in the judicial history of Canada. Once again, Mr. Gill disappeared when things were getting hot. Since then, he has never set foot in Canada. CSIS never denied that Surjan Gill had worked for them, while his continual silence only further substantiates all suspicions held towards him.
The presence of a CSIS spy among the conspirators could explain the strange behavior that the Canadian authorities have adopted since the beginning of the Air India case. For example, the destruction by CSIS of more than 300 hours of recorded phone conversations between the main suspects. Or the fact that a lawyer for the Canadian government, Yvan Whitehall, intervened during the coroner’s inquiry, in Ireland, to try to prevent the coroner from concluding that a bomb was responsible for the disaster, as was revealed by Mr. Salim Jaya in his book, “The Death of Air India Flight 182”. (URL: www.flight182.com/part212.htm)
Unfortunately, the name of Surjan Gill was never mentioned in the recent report written by former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, potential runner for the Liberal leadership. The Liberal government had appointed him as advisor for the steps to take following the acquittal of Mr. Bagri and Mr. Malik, on March 16 2005.
But, for CSIS, the Air India affair is much more than a case of incompetence or of lack of experience—the intelligence agency being just one-year old at the time of the disaster—as some said. As an informer, Mr. Gill reported to CSIS. And, as a federal agency, CSIS reports to the Government of Canada. The role of Surjan Gill in the Air India case thus raises the question of the possible criminal responsibility of the Canadian state in the worst mass murder in all of our history.
If this upcoming public inquiry can accomplish something, it will be to address definitely, for once and for all, this delicate issue. That’s why I’m urging your government to go the whole way in the quest for the truth in this painful case.
It’s not only the right to know for the families of the victims that’s at stake here. It’s also the right of the Canadian people.
___________________
Alexandre Popovic
C.C. M. Serge Ménard
M. Réal Ménard
Mme Carole Freeman
M. Joe Comartin
Mme Sue Barnes
M. Brian Murphy
M. Irwin Cotler
M. Derek Lee
Friday, June 20, 2003
Search warrants in Air India case
show RCMP ready to charge 'informant'
CAMILLE BAINS
VANCOUVER (CP) - Sealed search warrants in the Air India bombing case released Friday by B.C. Supreme Court show that the RCMP had prepared to charge a man recently revealed as a possible informant for Canada's spy agency.
The Mounties had obtained two search warrants Nov. 7, 1996, for the home and relative's vehicle of Surjan Singh Gill, who was named in court documents released last month as a possible mole for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The search warrants sealed since 1996 list four counts - three of first-degree murder and one of conspiracy - against Gill and five other men.
But Gill has never been charged and now lives in England. CSIS officials and Solicitor General Wayne Easter have denied an agent infiltrated a network of Sikh extremists believed to be involved in the Air India bombings.
Easter has also rejected calls by opposition MPs for an inquiry.
The other men listed in the four counts include Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who are currently on trial in Canada's biggest mass murder case. Both men now face eight counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and other charges.
Inderjit Singh Reyat, Hardial Singh Johal and Talwinder Singh Parmar are also named in the four counts.
"Through the interception of private communications and physical surveillance, a number of meetings were held" between Gill, Parmar, Johal, Malik and others known to police in the weeks prior to June 22, 1985, says the information to obtain the search warrants.
"In a letter dated June 20, 1985, Surjan Singh Gill suddenly resigned as a member of the Babbar Khalsa," the document also says.
The Babbar Khalsa is a terrorist group of Sikh extremists banned last week by the Canadian government.
Reyat was convicted in February of manslaughter for his part in the bombing of Air India Flight 182, and is serving a controversial five-year sentence in the downing of Air India Flight 182.
All 329 crew and passengers - mostly Canadian - perished when the aircraft plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985 after a suitcase bomb exploded.
Reyat has already served a 10-year sentence for his role in another suitcase bomb blast less than an hour earlier at Tokyo's Narita airport, where two baggage handlers died. The luggage was destined for another Air India flight.
Johal died in Vancouver last year after an illness and Parmar, who was believed to be the mastermind behind the bombing conspiracy, was killed in India in 1992.
Parmar was also chief of the Babbar Khalsa, an organization of Sikh separatists bent on seeking revenge against the Indian government. Threats had been made against Air India, the government-owned airline.
That was after the Indian government ordered the Indian Army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, Sikhism's holiest shrine, a year earlier.
On Friday, Justice Ian Josephson allowed release of the sealed warrants, along with most of the information used as grounds to obtain them, after the CBC filed an application to have the information disclosed.
The Mounties had applied to have the search warrants sealed to protect Gill and his family during the investigation of the two Air India bombings.
Police had also asked the court to seal wiretap conversations in the ongoing Air India investigation.
Gill has consented to the release of the information, the court heard.
The release of the search warrants was not a contentious issue between the Crown and defence lawyers for Bagri and Malik.
But both sides told Josephson that they did not want the disclosure of some information used to obtain the warrants because it identifies the men on trial and may jeopardize the case.
"It is speculative, unreliable, highly prejudicial and denied by the source," Richard Peck, defence lawyer for Bagri, said of parts of the information used by the RCMP as grounds to obtain the search warrants.
Richard Fernyhough, defence lawyer for Malik, told Josephson that he is also opposed to such material that includes his client's name.
"The fruits of that search are not part of the case against Mr. Malik or Mr. Bagri," Fernyhough said.
Crown lawyer Dianne Wiedemann also objected to the release of several paragraphs in the information to obtain the search warrants.
She said Gill's identity as a confidential informant had to be protected and that the information could not impact Bagri and Malik's trial, which resumes in the fall after a summer recess.
Wiedemann, along with a lawyer for the RCMP, also did not want wiretap information released, even ifGill and his lawyer David Gibbons, who was not in court Friday, had given consent.
"Some of the conversations are between third parties and Mr. Gibbons cannot consent to those conversations," Wiedemann said.
Josephson will review the information used to obtain the search warrants and may release the contentious parts at a later date.
e-mail:: mmbobov@yahoo.fr