Kanishka: Canadian police kept in dark about prime suspect

Former Superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Lyman Henschel said senior officials from RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service liaison held a top- level meeting shortly after the bombing to setup a task force.

He said that despite the presence of the CSIS official at the meeting, he was not told that the intelligence agency had been recording Talwinder Singh Parmar’s phone conversations for three months before the disaster.

The revelation provides fresh evidence of the rocky relations between the two agencies which have been blamed by many for the failure to prevent the attacks.

“I was not made aware of the existence of – relevant to the Air India investigation – intercept material,” Henschel said.

The retired Mountie said he left discussions with Randy Claxton, the head of CSIS in British Columbia, who is in ill health and isn’t expected to testify, feeling assured CSIS would preserve key evidence related to the bombing, Canada’s worst terror attack.

Heschel’s notes from the conversations indicate he was assured by Claxton that “any incriminating evidence from CSIS installations (the common jargon for wiretaps or electronic intercepts) will immediately be isolated and retained.”

“I was quite content with the arrangement that had been made,” said Henschel.

Air India commission lawyer Anil Kapoor showed the inquiry a memo from CSIS that was dated four days after the June 23, 1985 bombing. It referred to “sensitive installations” the agency would have to consider sharing. Henschel said nobody told him the intercepts were linked to Air India or the issue of Sikh extremism.

CSIS has always said that there was nothing of value on the Parmar tapes and that erasing them was routine procedure.

However, at the trial in 2003, the government conceded that it was a case of “unacceptable negligence.”

A 1996 memo by the head of the RCMP’s Air India task force, Insp Gary Bass, now the force’s deputy commissioner, said, “There is a strong likelihood that, had CSIS retained the tapes … a successful prosecution of at least some of the principals … could have been undertaken.”

While the tapes were destroyed, the transcriber notes survived, indicating Parmar had conversations with a contact in Germany about a plot to assassinate former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Another retired Mountie, Mike Roth, testified he first learned CSIS had wire tapped Parmar more than a month after the disaster – July 24, 1985.

Roth, who headed an RCMP unit to liaise with CSIS when it was created in 1984, said he was initially denied access to the intercepts and transcriber notes. “I was in a bit of disbelief,” he said, adding he quickly set up a meeting with Claxton to find out why.

In a subsequent meeting with the provincial CSIS boss, Roth said he was told he would receive the information in daily situation reports issued to the Air India task force by CSIS. Such reports were a synopsis of the transcribed notes, “cleansed for the protection of material,” said Roth.

Claxton assured him if any of the recordings could have been used for evidence, a copy would be made, he said.

Roth gained access to the transcriber notes in early September, but couldn’t explain the delay.

Parmar, the head of the militant group Babar Khalsa, was arrested by the RCMP shortly after the attack but was released for lack of evidence. He later left Canada, and in 1992 was shot dead by police in Punjab.

Tape erasures by CSIS were a significant issue in the trial of Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person convicted in relation to the bombing. A Parmar associate, he was found guilty on a reduced charge of manslaughter in 2003 and was sentenced to five-year imprisonment.

Air India Flight 182 exploded near Ireland, as it was en route from Canada to India. The blast killed 329 people, including 280 Canadians.

The issue also surfaced in the separate case of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were accused of playing senior roles in the bombing.

They were acquitted following a USD 130-million trial in Vancouver two years ago, in a verdict that outraged the victims’ families.

Another connected bombing killed two luggage handlers at Tokyo’s Narita airport.