Air India Was a CSIS job

Canadian Intelligence Service implicated in Air India bombing

James Corbett
Corbett Report

June 16, 2007

On June 23, 1985, a bomb planted aboard Air India Flight 182 exploded as it made its way from Toronto to London Heathrow, killing all 329 aboard. The bombing still stands as Canada’s deadliest instance of mass murder, and was the deadliest act of terrorism involving airplanes before the events of September 11, 2001. In 2005, some two decades after the original disaster, the only two suspects to be put on trial for the bombing were acquitted due to a lack of evidence. The verdict created an uproar in Canada, and the government duly set up an inquiry, headed by John Major, which is currently looking into the disaster and its investigation. But witnesses testifying before the commission over the last weeks out of the Canadian inquiry into the Air India Flight 182 disaster have started painting a picture of government foreknowledge which is confirming suspicions that the Canadian CIA -- the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) -- were complicit in the bombing and its coverup.

On May 17, two former government lawyers, Graham Pinos and Michael Anne MacDonald, testified to the inquiry that they were attending international hearings on terrorism in Los Angeles during the week preceding the bombing. Each of them claims to have had separate conversations with a Mr. Mel Deschesnes of CSIS in which he stated there was a problem with Sikh extremists in Vancouver who were seeking to bring down an airplane. He left the conference unexpectedly on June 20, telling Ms. MacDonald that there was an urgent problem with the extremists in Vancouver. The bombing took place three days later. Mr. Pinos testified that when the bombing took place, his reaction was to say to himself “Holy expletive, they knew, they knew.” Streaming video of their testimony can be watched here.

This clear evidence of foreknowledge further corroborates the idea that CSIS had a part to play in the bombing itself. The trail of CSIS involvement leads back to one Surjan Singh Gill. Immediately in the wake of the bombings, suspicion quickly came to bear on a group calling itself Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh religious society that was seeking to establish a Sikh homeland in the Punjab. According to the government citation against the only two to be brought to court for the bombing, Surjan Singh Gill was on the incorporation documents that created the society. A Globe and Mail article from 2003 details how Gill delivered the bombs that were used in the attack. Just days before the bombing, however, Gill pulled out of the plot. Although always under suspicion for his part in the bombing, he was not brought in by the police. The Globe and Mail article details how Gill “move[d] to England in 2000, shortly before two other men were charged in the case. Before he left Canada, the RCMP had identified Mr. Gill as one of six main suspects in the Air-India case, recently released RCMP documents show. Mr. Gill was never charged in the bombings.”

How did Surjan Singh Gill have the ability to found the group that carried out the bombing, deliver the bombs, pull out of the plot just before it took place, get on the RCMP list of main suspects, and avoid even being brought before a court of justice? According to transcripts of RCMP interrogations obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Gill was a CSIS mole who was ordered to pull out of the group just before the bombings so that CSIS could not be directly implicated. The transcripts also detail the destruction of wiretaps that took place in the wake of the bombings in order to hide CSIS’ involvement in the attack.

p>These stunning revelations are being downplayed in the mainstream media, as usual, but the fact remains that a mole of the Canadian intelligence service founded the group that ran the bombing, helped organize and pull off the bombing, and escaped without charge. Canadian citizens who find this unacceptable should contact their Member of Parliament to demand that Canada request Surjan Singh Gill’s extradition from England in order that he may be brought before the inquiry to answer for his role with CSIS and his role in the bombings.