Behind the blasts

The arrest of two persons accused of blowing up the Kanishka in 1985 will be widely welcomed in India. Fifteen years is a long time to wai...

The arrest of two persons accused of blowing up the Kanishka in 1985 will be widely welcomed in India. Fifteen years is a long time to wait for this first major step in the process of bringing the guilty to justice. But the important thing is to complete the process no matter how long it takes. It took 12 years of investigations by police from several countries before the Lockerbie case — also a midair explosion caused by terrorist bombs — could be brought to trial. By that yardstick the Canadians with help from Indian agencies have done well to come up with some names after a decade and a half. It has obviously not been easy. Besides the Kanishka explosion there was the related Tokyo airport incident to investigate as well. Some 900 witnesses have had to be interviewed and it could not have helped the investigators that one of the alleged masterminds, Talwinder Singh Parmar of the Babbar Khalsa International, was killed by the Punjab police in Phillaur in 1992.

For the families of the 329 people who died when Air India’s Flight 182 exploded in the air over the Irish Sea there is still a long way to go before the tragedy can be put completely behind them. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who conducted investigations in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and other parts of British Columbia, the search for culprits does not end with Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri being charged and arrested. Investigations are continuing and more arrests are possible. More years will pass while the accused are tried in court and a verdict is delivered. However, the Canadians appear to have achieved a major breakthrough in the case. What is more, it confirms that they are determined to bring the guilty to book. It is important for everyone concerned that the case be brought to closure. For the progress so far the families of the victims will be thankful. As the wife of the ill-fated aircraft’s co-pilot puts it, at last the mystery is over and she pointedly thanks theCanadian police for sticking doggedly with this difficult case.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee specifically cited the Kanishka incident in his call to the UN General Assembly in 1998 to develop a collective and tough approach to countering international terrorism. An essential part of anti-terrorism measures is to track down terrorists and bring them to trial, to prove to them and their state sponsors and would-be terrorists that there is no hiding from the law, that there will be a very heavy price to pay for their criminal acts. That is why the world, horrified by the targeting of hundreds of innocent air passengers, will watch closely progress on the Kanishka and Lockerbie cases. These are crucial test cases for the international community to show it will not rest until the ends of justice are met. Neither the passage of time nor the rise of new kinds of terrorism should lead to slackening of the effort on earlier crimes. Defeating terrorism, one of the gravest threats facing nation states at this time, calls for a high degree of coordination among countries on everything fromassessing the levels of motivation of terrorist groups and their capabilities and targets to conducting full investigations into incidents which have occurred.