Air India inquiry submissions made public
The judicial inquiry into the Air India tragedy has released nearly 1,600 pages of written submissions, covering 18 months of public hearings and testimony about the federal government’s handling of the 1985 bombing.
The inquiry, headed by retired Supreme Court justice John Major, held its last public hearings in February but the documents were only posted to the probe’s website Thursday because the federal government needed time to translate its submissions into Canada’s two official languages, according to a news release.
A commission spokesman said the released documents cover all the oral and written material received by the inquiry from principal parties like the government and Air India and those who asked to intervene, such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the World Sikh Organization.
Air India Flight 182 went down in the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people on board, many of them Canadians.
The Boeing 747 was blown apart in flight by a bomb planted in a suitcase.
On the same day, a bomb explosion in a cargo area of Tokyo’s Narita airport killed two baggage handlers.
Both suitcases contained similar bombs and were checked in at Vancouver airport.
From the beginning, the investigation focused on militant Sikh separatists living in B.C.
Only one conviction in case
Only one man, Inderjit Singh Reyat, the bomb maker, has ever been convicted in the cases.
The suspected mastermind of the plot, Talminder Singh Parmar, died in Indian police custody in 1992 and the Crown’s two chief suspects were acquitted in 2005 of involvement after an elaborate, high security trial in Vancouver.
Victims’ family members have been harshly critical of the RCMP, CSIS and the federal government for their response to the bombings.
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a full judicial inquiry on May 1, 2006, and hearings began just over a month later.
The inquiry’s main focus is on the federal government and its agencies, and how they handled surveillance of militant suspects before the bombing, and whether changes in law are necessary to cope with current threats from terror organizations.
As well, Major was supposed to find out whether the authorities at the time of the bomb plot took the threat of militant Sikh separatism seriously.
Families want apology
Lawyers for the victims' families have called for a formal apology from the prime minister, given what they say is a litany of intelligence, policing and regulatory failures surrounding the worst mass murder in Canadian history.
"The government not only failed to protect [the families'] loved ones, it also failed to successfully investigate and prosecute those responsible for this heinous crime," Jacques Shore, a lawyer for victims' families, said in his written submission.
Families also asked that the federal government reconsider the issue of financial compensation, although that was not part of the inquiry’s mandate.
No date has been set for Major to deliver his final report but it’s expected before the end of this year.