Kanishka: Former official charges Canada Police
Charging senior officers of Canadian police with willful inaction, a top Canadian intelligence official said several days before the Air India disaster police had showed him a document suggesting the flight would be targeted on the weekend of the ...
By PTI |
TORONTO: Charging senior officers of Canadian police with willful inaction, a top Canadian intelligence official said several days before the Air India disaster police had showed him a document suggesting the flight would be targeted on the weekend of the attack.
Ontario Lt Governor James Bartleman, who was director general of External Affairs' intelligence bureau in 1985, testified at the public inquiry that he saw an intelligence document warning of an attack on Air India aircraft just days before the bombing.
He said he personally delivered the document to a committee meeting on Sikh extremism that was going on at the same time.
When he showed the document to the senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer at the meeting, Bartleman said, he was "startled" by the reaction he got.
"He flushed and told me that of course he'd seen it, and that he didn't need me to tell him how to do his job," he said. "That confirmed that he had seen it and that the RCMP would take that into consideration and do what was necessary. The next thing in my memory is the downing of the aircraft."
Bartleman was in charge of the intelligence analysis and security branch of the Department of External Affairs when the plane blew up on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people on board.
Bartleman said he found the document in his daily package of intelligence briefings in the week of June 18.
"I saw in there a document that indicated Air India was being targeted that weekend, specifically the weekend of the 22-23," Canadian Broadcasting reported quoting Bartleman.
"It was raw, unevaluated information. There had been so many alarms raised over the previous year about potential attacks that I suppose it would be possible for someone to say this is just another one of these cry wolf events."
When asked why he recalled that incident so clearly, Bartleman said he had never been "hissed at" in such a way during his career and that it made a "searing impression."
"I know what I saw and I know what happened," said Bartleman.
Bartleman said he didn't reveal the information until the inquiry was established because he assumed the matter was investigated during one of the internal reviews by the RCMP.
The inquiry into the disaster, headed by retired Supreme Court justice John Major, resumed Monday with a focus on leads, tips and warnings that surfaced before the disaster.
Of the 329 people on Air India Flight 182, 280 were Canadian citizens and 82 were children. The bombing brought down the plane over the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland.
A separate luggage bomb destined for a second Air India flight killed two Japanese baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.
Talwinder Singh Parmar, the suspected mastermind of the plot, was arrested in November 1985 on weapons, explosives and conspiracy charges, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. He died in India in 1992 in what officials said was a shootout with police.
Two other men, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted of all charges in 2005 after the costliest investigation and prosecution in Canadian history.
Bombmaker Inderjit Singh Reyat was imprisoned for manslaughter in a 2003 plea bargain.
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