Delayed Canadian Inquiry Into Flight 182 Resumes

A Canadian inquiry into the nearly 22-year-old bombing of Air India Flight 182 resumed this week, with officials hearing the airline was "ultimately responsible" for security failures in Toronto and Montreal that allowed the Boeing 747 to be downed. The terrorist act killed 329 people, in what has been described as the worst mass murder in Canadian history.

The official inquiry into the 1985 bombing of air India Flight 182 began May 1, 2006. Just this month, new information and new witnesses have emerged.

Former police officer and dog handler with Quebec's provincial police, Serge Carignan, told the Air India inquiry Wednesday he believes he could have found explosives on the flight, but the plane had already departed from the Montreal airport by the time he got there.

Former security guard Daniel Lalonde told inquiry head, retired Supreme Justice John Major, he overheard one Air India official at Mirabel Airport that night "stressing how expensive it would be to delay the flight any longer," despite the discovery of three suspicious bags that prompted them to call in a bomb-sniffing dog.

According to Lalonde, Air India officials decided to go ahead and send Flight 182 on its way on June 22, 1985, before it could be searched by the bomb-sniffing dog because they were worried about extra costs... as the plane had already been delayed on the ground for more than an hour. This, despite the fact those same officials had been reporting recent escalating bomb threats to Canadian law enforcement.

Carignan, who'd been called in to conduct the baggage search, said he was told officials needed help searching a plane and luggage, that the airport's regular Royal Canadian Mounted Police explosives dog was not available. By the time he arrived, roughly 45 minutes later, the plane had already taken off, he told the inquiry.

"I've always wondered why, if I was called to search an airplane and some luggage... why did they let the airplane go before I arrived there," said Carignan.

"I did not have a chance to search that airplane. I believe that if I had a chance to search it, things might have turned out differently," he said. "I believe we would have found... the explosives."

Lalonde is currently a sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police. During the night in question, he was an 18-year-old new-hire working for Burns Security in his first job. He said he had little training, and was earning $4 an hour.

He testified a representative of the airline named "John," a large, tall man wearing a blue suit and fez, complained about the cost concerns to another person as Lalonde stood nearby.

"I don't recall the words, but I recall it had to do with time and money and how much it cost for a plane to be kept on the ground," Lalonde testified.

Lalonde told the inquiry he had decided, after all these years, to come forward "to be helpful and clarify, if it was pertinent." He believes the Air India official of whom he spoke was likely John Leo D'Souza, Air India's security chief, who has since passed away.

D'Souza's interview by police after the bombing places blame on another Air India official, Jainul Abid, for allowing the plane take off even after suspicious bags were found. The interview transcript was entered as an exhibit Wednesday.

"To my opinion his mind was already made up not to search the plane at Mirabel Airport and not to delay any further the flight schedule of Air India 182 since it was already delayed by 1.5 hours and no one to my knowledge took the initiative to recall the Air India 182 flight for security purposes," D'Souza said.

In the interview, he said he could have recalled the flight to the airport, but that "in my mind, there never was any doubt which would justify such an action regarding AI 182 on the 85-6-23."

No statement given to police in the days after the bombing mentions or makes reference to cost as the reason or potential reason the flight was not subjected to more thorough security checks,  according to the Vancouver Sun.

"I had no suspicions that there could be anything harmful on Air India 182 either to the aircraft crew and passengers," D'Souza told police.

D'Souza said he insisted the three suspect Montreal bags be removed from the plane. But they were put away for the bomb-sniffing dog Arko and Carignan, his handler.

Carignan and Arko, were taken to an airport bunker after their arrival to search the three pieces of luggage, but the dog didn't find any explosives, Carignan said.

Carignan disregarded official RCMP and Transport Canada reports during an earlier probe that said bomb-sniffing dogs checked the flight before it left Toronto and Montreal.

"It is not true. I did not screen the flight. The only work I did was search these three suitcases," said Carignan.

The explosives, allegedly planted by Sikh extremists, were carried in suitcases loaded in Vancouver on the Boeing 747 after Air India's X-ray machine broke down, and was replaced by an ineffective hand-held "PD-4 sniffer."

D'Souza said at the time the PD-4 "is a good instrument for detecting explosive natural fumes emanating from suitcases" even though the RCMP had informed Air India five months earlier the device didn't even work, according to media reports.

Liberal Parliament member Ujjal Dosanjh said contradictions with the RCMP and Transport Canada reports are alarming.

"All of these contradictions are the making of a cover-up," Dosanjh told CBC News on Wednesday. "This is now more than casual indifference."

Retired Transport Canada official and head of Ontario airport security, Dale Mattson, testified he wished Air India had conducted a baggage match against passengers because it would have inevitably discovered the bomb.

Ultimately that security failure "is something that rested with" Air India, he said. But, for that time, the airline's security plan, including the sniffer and X-ray machine, were "so far ahead of minimum standards" it was unlikely Transport Canada could have intervened even if the agency wanted to, he said.

Mattson said he was aware of "general" threats to Air India, but denied knowledge of the more extreme examples recently presented to the inquiry, such as a May 1985 Air India Telex that detailed "sensational acts such as hijackings of Air India" being plotted by Sikh extremists.

Even more sensational evidence is expected Thursday when two lawyers are to testify about a conversation relating to Sikh extremists in British Columbia that took place during a California meeting before the Air India bombing.

Mattson told Jacques Shore, the lawyer for the Air India victims' families, that "much has been learned from the loss of all those poor souls."

"There were a lot of things that we have learned from the lesson of Air India that could have been done differently," Mattson said.

FMI: www.airindia.com, www.majorcomm.ca/en