"Air India Inquiry: 'They knew, they knew before the bomb went off'"

Friday, May 18, 2007

AIR INDIA INQUIRY
'They knew, they knew before the bomb went off'
Senior CSIS officer appeared to know beforehand that Sikh extremists were
going to target plane, two lawyers testify
BY JEFF SALLOT 
Canada - The Toronto (ON) Globe & Mail


OTTAWA -- A senior Canadian Security Intelligence Service officer seemed to
have advance knowledge of the Sikh extremist plot to bomb an Air India
flight in 1985, two lawyers testified yesterday.

Their testimony is based on separate conversations with Mel Deschenes, then
the head of the CSIS counterterrorist branch, just days before the bombing.

Graham Pinos, who was a federal Justice Department lawyer representing CSIS,
said he remembers talking shop with Mr. Deschenes over drinks beside a Los
Angeles hotel pool.

Mr. Deschenes said that CSIS considered Sikh extremism the biggest terrorist
threat facing Canada, not the Armenian nationalists whose violent activities
had brought the Canadians to California.

Mr. Deschenes didn't specify that Air India Flight 182 was a target, Mr.
Pinos said.

However, "he did tell me he was afraid of a plane being taken out of the
air, or in his words, blown out of the air" by Sikh extremists.

The Air India flight was bombed four days later. Mr. Pinos, now in private
law practice, said he thought: "Holy expletive. They knew. They knew. I had
a distinct impression that they knew something was going to happen."

In earlier testimony yesterday, Michael Anne MacDonald, who was an Ontario
government prosecution lawyer in the Armenian case, said she also had what
now seems like an eerie conversation with Mr. Deschenes at the L.A. hotel.

Mr. Deschenes told her he had to head back to Canada early to deal with an
urgent Sikh terrorism case.

When she heard that the plane had been blown out of the sky, she too
remembered Mr. Deschenes's words. "I thought, even when they know something
is going to happen, they can't stop it."

Inquiry lawyers say Mr. Deschenes is not going to testify. He's old and in
poor health.

Tracey McCann, a federal lawyer at the Air India inquiry, said the
government disputes the accuracy of the recollections of the two witnesses.

However, Jacques Shore, a lawyer for the families of Air India victims, said
Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Pinos provide important new evidence.

Their testimony tends to corroborate Ontario Lieutenant-Governor James
Bartleman's startling statement earlier this month that Canadian authorities
knew of a threat against Flight 182, Mr. Shore said.

Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Pinos were in Los Angeles at a judicial hearing to
obtain wiretap evidence in the case of an Armenian nationalist who had
attacked a Turkish diplomat in Canada. 

Mr. Pinos quoted Mr. Deschenes as saying that CSIS feared Sikh extremists
would attack Indian interests, including Air India.

"I have an absolutely clear recollection of events. It was something that
shocked me," Mr. Pinos said.

Ms. MacDonald said she vividly remembers Mr. Deschenes checking out of the
hotel early. They ran into each other in a corridor and Mr. Deschenes said
he had received an urgent call and had to rush back to Canada to deal with a
problem of Sikh extremism.

Ms. MacDonald said that when she learned that Flight 182 had exploded over
the Atlantic, her first thought was: "They knew, they knew before the bomb
went off."

In a 1988 report, Mr. Deschenes wrote that he did not have advance word
about the bomb plot. But he wasn't feeling well and decided to leave early. 

He said he may have used a "work-related pretext."

"My return from Los Angeles was not sudden and could only have been
perceived as such by someone who chose the warm sands of Venice Beach over a
return to cool Ottawa," Mr. Deschenes wrote.

Revelations

When the Air India inquiry began hearing witnesses last month, many in
Ottawa predicted a boring rehash of details about a 22-year-old cold case.

But commission counsel Mark Freiman and his investigators have produced five
surprise witnesses with new information about the days before Air India
Flight 182 blew up.

James Bartleman

Mr. Bartleman, Ontario's Lieutenant-Governor and a former federal security
official, said he saw a raw intelligence report saying Air India would be a
target of a Sikh extremist attack on its next weekly flight from Canada.

Serge Carignan

Mr. Carignan, an ex-Quebec provincial police dog handler, said he and his
bomb-sniffing dog Arko were called too late to search Flight 182 baggage at
Montreal's Mirabel Airport, the last stop before the plane blew up.

Daniel Lalonde

A former Burns Security guard at Mirabel who is now an Ontario Provincial
Police sergeant, Mr. Lalonde said he listened in while an Air India official
gave the go-ahead for the flight to take off because further delays would be
too costly.

Michael Anne MacDonald

Ms. MacDonald, a former Crown prosecutor, said the head of the CSIS
counterterrorism branch had to rush away from a case in Los Angeles to deal
with an urgent Sikh extremism problem in Canada days before the bombing.

Graham Pinos

Mr. Pinos, a former lawyer with the Justice Department, said he was in Los
Angeles, too, and the CSIS officer told him the agency's greatest fear was
Sikh extremists bombing an Air India flight.

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