It's been twenty years since the second-worst single act of terror in modern history after the 9/11 atrocities. On June 23, 1985, Air India 182 was bombed out of the skies off the coast of Ireland. All 329 passengers and crew, most of them Canadians, were murdered. A related bombing, which happened at around the same time in Narita, Japan, killed two ground crew.
It's incredible that after 20 years, we still don't have answers in this case. An extremely high profile trial ended earlier this year, when two of the main suspects in the case, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were acquitted on all 331 counts of first degree murder. The judge in Vancouver -- where the two bombs were apparently made and loaded onto the two planes -- said that while the government had proven there was a conspiracy, they had gone after the wrong people. (A third, Inderjit Singh Reyat, had copped a plea and got just five years in prison for manslaughter in exchange for his testimony against Malik and Bagri). I won't bother going into all the politics that prompted the bombings (namely, the conflict between those of Sikh and Hindu origin). Others have done a better job explaining that.
What I will say is that this case was a classic one of Keystone Kops. Around the time of the bombings, most of the intelligence operations that were once handled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were spun off into a new spy agency, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
CSIS had been keeping a close eye on Sikh militants based in Canada after the raid of the Golden Temple at Amritsar. It's no secret that Indira Gandhi was assassinated in revenge, but many Sikhs thought even her murder wasn't enough. In fact, at a rally at Madison Square Garden shortly after Amritsar, Bagri defiantly declared the murder of 50,000 Hindus wasn't enough.
Just three weeks before Air India, CSIS, who was wiretapping some militants, said they overheard an explosion. They didn't think much of it at the time. In fact, they actually erased the tape. It turns out it may have been a practice bomb, preparing for the real thing.
Two things infuriate me about the whole affair.
One: it wasn't just that one tape that was erased. Over 150 hours of key evidence that could have shed more light on the affair were demagnetized. Why? It seems that CSIS was trying to assert its independence and was worried the Mounties wanted oversight on what was intended to be a civilian agency.
Second: no one seems to have learned anything from the affair. Someone who loads a bag onto a plane but then doesn't show up for that plane -- or takes another flight to the same destination -- should raise an alarm bell. It didn't in this case, until it was too late. Three years later, someone made the same mistake at Heathrow. Does Pan Am 103 ring a bell?
And all that "chatter": seems that CSIS didn't have enough people on staff who spoke either Punjabi or Hindi, the languages of the Sikhs and Hindus respectively. They couldn't figure it out until it was too late. Sixteen years later, there was also a significant amount of buzz being picked up by most of the intelligence agencies around the world, but not enough people who spoke Arabic. The key message -- "Tomorrow is Zero Hour" -- was only translated two days later. On September 12, 2001.
Simple point is, there are too many people out there who are willing to do things. We have to stay one step ahead of them -- and be serious when we say we're going to crush terror in all its forms. At the very least, there has to be a public inquiry about the events of twenty years ago. It may not shed light on who did it, but it may (as did the 9/11 Commission) answer how the government dropped the ball.
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