Probe blames govt for failure to prevent Kanishka tragedy

Bal Krishna

Toronto, Jun 17 (PTI) A long-awaited inquiry into the
1985 Air India Kanishka bombing, which killed 329 people
mostly of Indian origin, Thursday blamed the Canadian
government for its failure to prevent the tragedy and
recommended the appointment of a powerful security czar to
resolve disputes between conflicting interests among security
agencies.

"The government needs to take responsibility to avoid
further failure and to prevent a return to a culture of
complacency," Justice John Major, the head of the Kanishka
bombing inquiry commission recommended Thursday, nearly 25
years after Canada's worst terrorist attack.
Canada's national security adviser should be given
sweeping new powers to resolve disputes between the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security and
Intelligence Services (CSIS), Justice Major told a live press
conference in Ottawa.
In the much awaited final report from the commission
that investigated the bombing of Air India Flight 182 on June
23, 1985, he observed that national security continues to be
badly organised between the RCMP and Canada's spy agency.
He also recommended radical transformation in
prosecution.
The national security adviser, who currently
provides advice to the prime minister on security and
intelligence issues, should also be the final arbiter where
the two agencies disagree, Major said.

Major, in his 3,200 pages report, said it is the
federal government’s responsibility to see it doesn't happen
again.
"This is a Canadian atrocity," said Major, who spent
four years going through tens of thousands of documents and
hearing more than 200 witnesses before completing the report
into the bombing.
"This was the largest mass-murder in Canadian
history," said Major.
Major underlined that the "finest tribute" that could
be paid the victims of the bombing is to create a rigorous
aviation security system.
"This will require co-operation and resources—but,
most importantly, leadership from the highest level of
government. Canada owes this legacy to the victims and their
families," he said.
The report was not expected to provide much answers to
the queries of families and relatives as to who was
responsible for the attack.
Years of criminal investigation have yielded just one
conviction, for manslaughter, against a British Columbia
mechanic Inderjit Singh Reyat who assembled bomb components.
Two other men - Rupinder Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh
Bagri- were acquitted due to lack of evidence. Another suspect
Talwinder Singh Parmar died in police custody in 1992.
Major had earlier promised that the stories of the
victims' families would be placed on record in the inquiry
report.
"Entire families were lost. Others were emotionally
destroyed by the death of their loved ones, fracturing their
home lives," Major wrote.
In addition to a beefed-up national security advisor,
Major's report offers 28 other recommendations, including
that terrorism prosecutions at the federal level should be run
by a Director of Terrorism Prosecutions to work closely with
the state agencies in the investigative and prosecutorial
stages.
It also recommended that the unit should be set up
inside the attorney-general's office, and not within the
independent public prosecutor's office, so that terror
prosecutions are "conducted in an integrated manner" and not
plagued by gaps.
It asked the CSIS to retain records and not destroy
secret intelligence for a period of 25 years.
It called for new procedures to protect the anonymity
of informers and greater secrecy protections for documents
given to the national security advisor.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet relatives of
the victims of the attack later Thursday. PTI CORR
RDM