Canadian PM apologises to Kanishka victims` families

Bal Krishna
Toronto, Jun 24 (PTI) Twenty-five years after the
Kanishka tragedy that claimed 329 lives, Canadian Premier
Stephen Harper Thursday apologised for the "institutional
failings" that led to the Air India bombing and took the first
step towards providing compensation to the victims' families.
In an emotional speech marking the 25th anniversary of
the attack, Harper said: "the mere fact of the destruction of
Air India Flight 182 is the primary evidence that something
went very, very wrong. For that, we are sorry.
"For that, and also for the years during which your
legitimate need for answers and, indeed, for empathy, were
treated with administrative disdain."
Harper's apology came less than a week after a damning
report on the bombing by Kanishka Inquiry Commissioner Justice
John Major concluded that a "cascading series of errors" by
police and authorities had led to the country's worst act of
terrorism which could have been prevented.
The Prime Minister recommended that an independent
commission be established to determine appropriate amounts of
compensation for the victims' families.
Air India Flight 182, Kanishka plunged into the
Atlantic on June 23, 1985, after an explosion in the aircraft
killing all 329 people on board.
Without naming independent statehood Khalistan demand
by a section of Sikh community in Canada, Harper said that his
government was committed to marginalise extremists and would
not allow them to use Canadian soil to export terrorism to
India.
"It is incumbent upon us all, not to reach out to, but
rather to marginalise, to carefully and systematically
marginalise those extremists who seek to import the battles of
India's past here and then to export them back to that great
and forward-looking nation," he said at a function also
attended by members of the victims' families and Canadian
politicians.
"Whoever would lift up a perverse ideology by casting
down the innocent- we must learn how to thwart them," he said.
MORE PTI