"Canadian police did not follow security protocol in Air India screening"

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Kanishka: Police did not follow airport security protocol
The Times of India


TORONTO - The Canadian Police have admitted before the Air India Inquiry
Commission probing the bombing of Kanishka plane in 1985 that it failed to
follow the security protocol that required the use of a bomb-sniffer dogs to
help screen luggage. 

All of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's explosive-sniffer dogs were away
on training the day baggage containing a bomb was loaded on to a doomed Air
India flight in Toronto, a former police officer said. 

RCMP dog handler Gary Carlson, who was stationed in Toronto, testified
before the Commission headed by Justice John Major that he and his dog Thor
were on an annual refresher course in Vancouver. 

The course also brought together all five other bomb-sniffer dog teams that
the RCMP had stationed near airports across Canada, he said. 

Mounties drug dogs could not be used as backup because they were trained
only to sniff out narcotics, he added. 

But Carlson said that even in the months before the bombing he and Thor had
never been called out to help search Air India luggage. 

His testimony on this point contradicts the RCMP's previous statements to an
informal inquiry conducted for the government by former Ontario premier Bob
Rae. 

The Mounties told Rae two years ago that bomb-sniffer dogs were available to
check bags being loaded on to the Air India flight 182. The plane was blown
up off the coast of Ireland in the early hours of June 23, 1985, killing all
329 aboard. 

Carlson submitted that he told Air India, following the January test, that
the hand-held device known as a PD-4 was not good enough for detection
purposes. 

He also told the airline that he and his dog Thor would be available any
time they were needed to check suspicious luggage. 

But Carlson and Thor were in Vancouver for a week-long training session on
June 22, 1985, when the bomb was planted in the baggage of Flight 182 went
undetected and 329 people died. 

"All the bomb dogs from across the country were there," Carlson told the
commission. 

"At that time we only had five or six dogs in the whole country that were
trained for explosives." 

There was no backup dog at Pearson because, in those days, other police
forces in the Toronto did not have canine teams capable of detecting
explosives. 

The standard procedure, in the absence of a dog, would have been to hand
search any baggage that was considered suspect, Carlson testified. 

It's known, however, that there were no hand searches that weekend at
Pearson. 

In addition, an X-ray machine broke down and Burns Security, the firm hired
by Air India to screen its baggage, had to resort to the electronic sniffer
that had failed its initial trial at the start of the year. 

Carlson said the hand-held PD-4 could not detect gun powder at any distance
greater than one inch from a test cache of the substance. 

It failed to register anything at all, no matter what the distance, when
tested on plastic explosives. 

The Mounties did have a drug-sniffing dog on duty at Pearson the weekend of
the bombing, but that animal hadn't been trained for explosives detection. 

Even today, said Carlson, only 10 to 15 per cent of the force's dogs
specialise in bomb-detection. 

"One might say we are a little bit more focused on crime with respect to
drugs than potentially suspected terrorist activity," observed Jacques
Shore, a lawyer for the families of the Air India victims. 

"Or another way of saying it is that there's a lot more drugs out there than
there are bombs" shot back Carlson. 

Previous testimony has disclosed that a Quebec provincial police dog handler
was called to screen Flight 182 when it made a stop later at Montreal's
Mirabel Airport. 

But Serge Carignan, the now-retired officer in question, stunned the inquiry
last week by saying the plane had already taken off by the time he got to
Mirabel, leaving him to check only three suspect suitcases that had been
pulled aside during passenger-boarding and left behind. 

The three bags turned out to be harmless. Carlson, for his part, found his
attendance at the training course in Vancouver was abruptly cut short after
the Air India plane went down the next day off the coast of Ireland. 

He was immediately recalled to resume his normal duties. 

"I boarded the next CP Air flight straight back to Toronto," he told the
commission. 

Gary Clarke, the former officer in charge of RCMP protective policing for
Ontario, called it "an unfortunate set of circumstances" that all the
force's bomb dogs had been off work at the same time.

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