This week, Canada’s spy agency will be asked to explain why it erased wiretaps of a key suspect in the 1985 Air India bombings. BackgroundNational reporter Terry Milewski
Family members of the bombing victims have long been frustrated by the lost evidence.
CBC News national reporter Terry Milewski will be covering the hearings. This is your chance to ask him questions about the public inquiry.
Click here to read Terry's answers.
Q| Johnny McVough, Vancouver: What is the story of the erased tapes? Did someone make the mistake and put in the reel but instead of hitting the play button pushed the erased button? Was CSIS so disorganized that they could make these types of error?A| No, it was not a mistake - it was deliberate. That's the incredible part of this story.
As we reported first in 2003 and have noted many times since, most of the Parmar tapes were erased after the bombing - after CSIS knew that Parmar was the prime suspect in the bombing.
Naturally, that gave rise to the suspicion that there was something sinister about the erasures - an attempt, perhaps, to hide something about what CSIS knew, or should have known. The witnesses have all denied that, although the alternative explanation they offer isn't much better - namely, that CSIS never even listened to some of the tapes and therefore never assessed their value before recycling the tapes.
Then, when the RCMP and the prosecutors starting asking questions, they claimed that they knew there was nothing of value on the tapes, when they really didn't know. The translator's notes survive, suggesting there was plenty of valuable evidence destroyed. The idea that a tape of Parmar plotting to assassinate India's Prime Minister was not valuable is, of course, absurd. Hence, prosecutor Jim Jardine's description of this fiasco: "inconceivable, incomprehensible, indefensible incompetence."
Q| Julie M in Montreal:
Given the immense scope of the case and the fact that the bombing occurred 22 years ago, is it reasonable to assume that no new information and no firm answers will ever be found? Apart from perhaps placing blame on the various people involved at the government level, what does the inquiry hope to achieve?
A| It's a reasonable question - especially since the inquiry is not allowed to answer one of the central questions for the victims' families - namely, who did it? The inquiry is not a trial and cannot place blame on anyone.
Still, what it hopes to achieve is not trivial. For one thing, it hopes to lay out the facts using something journalists don't have - the power of subpoena - to expose weaknesses in the investigation and to hold authorities accountable for them. (The inquiry has already added some fairly astonishing details on that score.)
Second, it will suggest improvements to the security and legal systems so that the authorities can do a better job next time. That doesn't make for exciting news, but it's really what this is about. Take one crucial example that's an issue this week: how do you use secret security intelligence as evidence in a criminal trial, where everything has to be disclosed the defence? John Major could make prosecutors, policemen and spies all breathe easier if he came up with a solution.
As to your suggestion that there's nothing new to be found - not so fast! Did you know, before the inquiry, that Air India told the Canadian authorities, in writing, three weeks before the bombing, that Sikh extremists were plotting to bomb their planes and that all bags had to be checked against passengers? Did you know that Air India's own staff in Toronto nevertheless failed to do that when they loaded an unaccompanied bag onto Flight 182?
Apart from that, remember that the inquiry is not the only game in town. There are probably several people living in Canada who have deep knowledge of the bomb plot and the RCMP's criminal inquiry is still active. The bomb-maker, Inderjit Reyat, is under renewed pressure to talk as he faces a perjury charge. Perhaps there will be charges in the unsolved murder of a key witness - Tara Singh Hayer. This story is never over, and certainly not yet.
Q| Bob Speed, Calgary: When were the CSIS tapes destroyed? Before June 23, 1985 or after?A| That's the strangest part of this: most of the tapes were erased after the bombing - when CSIS knew that Parmar was the prime suspect. Its agent in charge of watching Parmar said his immediate reaction to the news was "Parmar did it!" And yet the destruction of the tapes continued.
The prosecutor at the time, Jim Jardine, only found out that the tapes had been erased in December of 1987, when the CBC's Brian Stewart broke the news on The National. As he testified Tuesday: “In the brashness of the moment, I wrote: 'inconceivable, incomprehensible, indefensible incompetence.”
A| Interesting question! And we'll soon find out the answer.
Q| P. Nelson, Vancouver:
Is there any change in the status of the june witnesses who refused to provide any information? Are any of them going to testify?
The June witnesses you refer to are the ones who backed out in June rather than tell what they know about Talwinder Parmar's alleged confession under torture by the Indian police, who killed Parmar in 1992. But those witnesses did not refuse to provide the information; they merely refused to provide it in public testimony. Now, though, the Commission is planning a second attempt to get that evidence into the record. Will they be the same witnesses, or similar? We shall see...
Q| Patrick Aucoin, Abbotsford: Any chance that a civil suit could be pressed against the Air India Bombing "Suspects"?A| This is the wrong address for legal advice, but experts say it's unlikely. Remember that, with the exception of Reyat, who's in jail, and Parmar, who's dead, the suspects were acquitted. If you can identify others, call the RCMP.
Q| J Hayer, Surrey: There have been reports in the Indian media that Parmar, the main accused was an agent of Indian spy agency and was eliminated by Indian police after arrest for reasons unknown. Is the inquiry looking at any link between Parmar and the the Indian spy agencies?A| Simply put, that's a wild goose chase that the inquiry will not be joining. What link? No such link has been shown in 22 years of trying by those who want to blame the Indian government for blowing up its own plane, just as there are those who blame Israel for 9/11.
The inquiry's mandate is not to solve the crime, in any case; that's for the police. Rather, its job is to find out what went wrong with the investigation - and the elimination of the main suspect by the Indian police is relevant, because he could not be tried. It created a problem for the investigation.
But the idea that Parmar, a separatist who preached and practiced death to Hindus, was an Indian agent, and therefore that the Indian government was to blame, has always been absurd. No serious person, and no inquiry, will waste any time on it. If Parmar was an Indian agent, why do Sikh separatists revere him as a martyr to their cause? That's completely illogical - although many Sikh separatists do simultaneously embrace the two contradictory positions: that he was a hero and that he was an agent of the hated Indian government.
But consider: on the wiretaps, Parmar was heard plotting to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi - presumably his paymaster, according to the Indian-agent theory. Parmar was seen going into the woods to test a bomb with his bomb-maker, Inderjit Reyat - who's twice been convicted. The bombs Reyat made for Parmar were the ones which killed the 331 victims. All this is fact. But there are no facts to suggest that Parmar was an Indian agent. In sum, we will hear evidence about the death of Parmar and the problems this created. But we won't be hearing evidence that he was working for the "Indian spy agencies," because there isn't any.
Q| Wayne Saewyc, Vancouver:
As I recall the summer recess was at least in part due to frustration on the part of John Majors regarding the scope and authority of the Inquiry. Could you explain what his dispute was, with whom, and what it may mean in regards to the current focus of the Inquiry?
The recess was not related to the dispute between the Commission and the government over what the Commission saw as excessive censorship of official documents. That issue was resolved to good effect. For example, the government had previously insisted that a pre-bombing telex from Air India, warning of precisely such an attack, be completely censored. After Commissioner John Major effectively threatened to quit, that telex re-emerged without any black ink at all - so we now know about a startlingly clear warning which came just three weeks before the bombing.
As for the focus on the wiretap tapes - that subject had been planned all along as part of the "post-bombing phase" of the inquiry which is now under way. It's part of the inquiry's mandate.
A| It's hard to run a trial, an inquiry or much of anything when people are away on holiday. Lawyers, staff, building management, witnesses... should they all scrap their vacations? Would they? Don't bet on it.
Q| Daniel Tones, Vancouver:
If this is such an important issue, why did the Air India Inquiry take a summer break?
