Air India report no consolation to victim families

OTTAWA - There is little consolation for the families of 329 Air India Kanishka bombing victims in the Canadian inquiry report released here Thursday morning by Justice John Major who headed the investigations.

Since rivalry between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had led the plot to succeed and the accused to go scot free, the inquiry has recommended that a new director of Terrorism Prosecutions be created to co-ordinate such cases in the future.

The new director of terrorism prosecutions should “provide relevant legal advice to the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams and to the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service,” the 4,000-page report says.

Though the spy agency (CSIS) had successfully traced and wire-taped the plot mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar testing the bomb, it failed to give the tapes to the RCMP. In fact, it erased the tapes rather than hand them over to the RCMP to successfully prosecute the suspects.

The report says “CSIS should destroy such intelligence after 25 years or a period determined by parliament, but only if the director of CSIS certifies that it is no longer relevant.”