Suspect in Air Sabotage Case Released
V A N C O U V ER, Canada, Oct. 31, 2000 -- — A third suspect taken into custody in connection with history’s worst case of aviation terrorism — the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, which took 329 lives — has been released after being questioned for 24 hours, but sources tell ABCNEWS the man’s legal problems are far from over.
Hardial Singh Johal, believed to be one of the key organizers of the plot,was arrested late Sunday in the Vancouver area by a team of officers fromthe Royal Canadian Mounted Police Air Disaster Task Force investigating theJune 23, 1985, bombing — the deadliest case of aviation sabotage in history.
The bomb, planted in a suitcase boarded in Vancouver the day before the disaster, ripped open the Boeing 747 as it cruised at 31,000 feet southwest of Ireland.
One hour earlier, another bomb that also originated in Vancouver exploded prematurely at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, killing Japanese baggage handlers Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda.
Sources tell ABCNEWS at least four more suspects will likely be arrested over the next few days as the roundup continues.
“We are still shaking the trees to see what falls out,” a police officer told ABCNEWS as Johal was allowed to return to his east Vancouver home late Monday.
Johal, a Vancouver school janitor and a former president of the Vancouver Sikh Temple, was suspected since 1985 when his former telephone number turned up on the tickets booked for two terrorists who checked in the bags.
Witnesses have told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police they saw Johal, 54, at Vancouver International Airport as the bag for Air India Flight 182 was being checked in.
Police also have wiretap evidence of coded conversationsbetween Johal and terror boss Talwinder Singh Parmar who was killed in 1992 during a shootout with Indian police.
Wave of Arrests
Two others, Ajaib Singh Bagri, a Kamloops, B.C., preacher and Vancouver millionaire Ripudaman Singh Malik made their first court appearance on Monday on eight charges including the murders of 329 who perished aboard Air India Flight182. Both Sikh fundamentalists were ordered detained until Nov. 30 without bail.
Authorities also named Inderit Singh Reyat as an unindictedco-conspirator for the Air India bombing. Reyat, of Duncan,B.C., was convicted of building the bomb that exploded in Tokyo and is serving the last year of a 10-year sentence.
Reyat, an auto mechanic from Duncan, B.C., originally fled to England before he could be charged. In 1989, he was apprehended and extradited to Canada.
Now, sources tell ABCNEWS, Canadian police plan to ask the British Home Office to waive renewed extradition proceedings, paving the way for the new charges.
His lawyer, Kuldip Chagar, told ABCNEWS Reyat might fight attempts to press new charges because extradition laws require that a person be charged only on the specified offenses he was sent back to face. But experts say the waiver would allow for the charges to be filed.
Reyat is currently in a maximum-security jail in British Columbia.
ABCNEWS has also learned that Canadian authorities have launched an international manhunt for another Sikh suspect, who skipped town 45 days ago. They believe the man is holed up in Pakistan, and are to ask authorities in Islamabad to help track him down.
History of Sikh Militants
Both Malik and Bagri are believed to have been allies of Burnaby Sikh Talwinder Singh Parmar, the leader of the Babbar Khalsa, a militant Sikh group founded in Canada.
The Babbar Khalsa is dedicated to the creation of a Sikh homeland called Khalistan in India’s Punjab state.
It was founded by Parmar, a Vancouver sawmill worker, in 1978, and means “Tigers of True Faith.”
The Babbar Khalsa had vowed to avenge the Indian army’s June 6, 1984, assault on the holiest shrine of Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in the Indian state of Punjab.
Police believe the plot to bomb the airliners was masterminded by the group, under the leadership of Parmar before he was shot dead by Indian police in a gunfight in 1992.
Indira Gandhi, then India’s prime minister, was assassinated six months after the attack on the Golden Temple by her bodyguards, in revenge.
Sikh militancy increased within the Sikh diaspora in various countries, with the formation of numerous groups who vowed to carve out an independent Khalistan in Punjab state in India.
A 10-year insurgency in the state of Punjab has cost tens of thousands of lives. But by 1995, a Sikh insurgency had been brought under control by the systematic liquidation of the leadership of militant group by Indian authorities.
Salim Jiwa is a Vancouver-based reporter who files for ABCNEWS’ I-Team investigative unit.