After 20 years of torment for victims' families, a Canadian court today will hand down a verdict on two Sikhs accused of planting a bomb which reaped 329 lives as it tore through an Air India jet.
Justice Ian Bruce Josephson will pass judgement in a blast-resistant courtroom on the world's worst airborne terror strike prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The two accused, Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik will learn their fate on eight charges of murder and conspiracy, watched by dozens of relatives of the victims.
Josephson's judgement comes after a dramatic trial, replete with tales of religious passion, intrigue and jilted lovers undercut by the sombre memory of hundreds of innocent civilians who perished.
Malik and Bagri, orthodox Sikhs who immigrated to Canada from Punjab, are accused of conspiring to plant suitcase bombs on two aircraft.
During the 19-month trial which Josephson heard without a jury, prosecutors contended that Malik, a millionaire Vancouver businessman, and Bagri, a rural millworker, were part of a radical Sikh group based on Canada's west coast.
Their mission was to punish India for its crackdown on Sikhs in the early 1980s and the armys attack on the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar, prosecutor Robert Wright told the court.
At the time, Sikhs worldwide were also campaigning for an independent homeland, to be called Amritsar.
Prosecutors presented evidence they said proved the Sikh group built suitcase bombs on Vancouver Island, bought airplane tickets, then planted the explosives on two flights from Vancouver that connected with Air India planes.
The first bomb exploded June 23, 1985, at Japan's Narita airport, killing two baggage handlers transferring suitcases to Air India Flight 201.
Some 54 minutes later, a second bomb exploded in the baggage hold of Air India Flight 182. All 329 people aboard the Jumbo Jet died over the Atlantic, off the coast of Ireland.
Malik and Bagri were not charged until 2000, along with a third man, Inderjit Singh Reyat.
Reyat had earlier been convicted in the Narita explosion and sentenced to 10 years, before he was charged with the bomb on Flight 182. In 2003, just before the trial was to begin, Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and is serving a five-year sentence.
Another immigrant to Canada, Tarwinder Singh Parma, was the alleged mastermind of the plot and died in a 1992 police shootout in India.
For the families of the Air India victims, the long wait for justice has been grueling. The 15-year international investigation was marred with controversies and setbacks, including the revelation that Canadian intelligence agents erased wiretap evidence.
The trial spread over 19 months, and several witnesses who were expected to provide key testimony suffered attacks of amnesia.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
RSS