BURST
RCMP officers continue to work on the Air India bombing investigation four decades after two B.C.-made bombs killed 331, but a criminologist said the chance of more charges is remote.
Sgt. Tammy Lobb told Postmedia that the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team still has investigators on the 1985 terrorism case, despite acquittals of two key suspects in 2005.
“The investigation is continuing, as we continue to investigate any emerging information,” Lobb said. “Should any new information or different information that we have not received in 40 years emerge, we will investigate it to uncover the truth.”
She said investigators believe they have identified all the suspects who were involved in planting the suitcase bombs on flights out of Vancouver airport on June 22, 1985.
One bomb exploded at Japan’s Narita Airport as two baggage handlers were transferring the Vancouver suitcase to an Air India flight. Both workers were killed.
Less than an hour later, a second B.C. bomb blew apart Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard. Most of the victims were Canadians of Indian origin.
Two B.C. men connected to the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group were charged in 2000, but acquitted by a B.C. Supreme Court judge in 2005. A third suspect, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was first convicted of manslaughter in the Narita bombing, then pleaded guilty to a second manslaughter count in the Air India blast.
Special 40th anniversary memorial events are planned for June 23 across Canada and in Ireland, near the spot where the flight went down.
Lobb wouldn’t comment on whether any new information has been uncovered in recent years.
“I’m sure you can appreciate there are details the investigation that I can’t discuss in order to protect the integrity of it, but I can tell you that throughout the investigation, suspects have been identified, and some of them, as you know, were charged and tried,” she said.
“Although there are elements of the investigation that are unresolved, we remain confident we’ve identified the people who were behind this act of terrorism.”
Criminologist Yvon Dandurand, professor emeritus at the University of the Fraser Valley, said Tuesday that it would be challenging for police to gather strong-enough evidence to get new charges approved so long after the crime.
“As you move through the years, it gets harder and harder, first to find the evidence, and second, to get enough of it to justify charges,” he said. “And then getting a conviction 40 years later, you would have to have an incredibly powerful kind of new evidence to do this.”
He said the best chance of new evidence might come with new informants that have knowledge of the terrorism plot, though even that is unlikely after 40 years.
“What other informants would there be who would have enough evidence other than their own word that other people were involved?” he said. “The RCMP is not going to say ‘forget about the whole thing. It’s too late,’ but I doubt very much that anyone there believes that there’s a significant chance.”
Babbar Khalsa founder Talwinder Singh Parmar — a former Burnaby resident who was killed by police in India in 1992 — was identified as the mastermind of the Air India plot by both the B.C. Supreme Court trial judge and by the head of the Air India Commission of Inquiry that ended in 2010.
Other suspects were identified at the trial of the acquitted suspects, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, including a mysterious man dubbed Mr. X who helped with a test bomb 19 days before the bombings. Lobb wouldn’t comment on whether investigators had identified Mr. X.
Dandurand said that while solving cold cases has been popularized by podcasts and true crime TV series, “in practice trying to investigate crimes 20, 30 or 40 years later is extremely difficult.”
kbolan@postmedia.com
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