Canada says investigation into Air India Flight 182 bombing is ‘active and ongoing’ | World News

Toronto: Canadian law enforcement authorities said the investigation into the bombing of Air India Flight 182 (Kanishka) by Khalistani terrorists on June 23, 1985, was “active and ongoing.”

In a statement released Friday, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul, head of the Federal Policing Program in the Pacific Region, said: “The Air India investigation is the longest and certainly one of the most complex domestic terrorism investigations the RCMP has conducted in its history. Our investigative efforts remain active and ongoing.”

He also urged Canadians to visit the four memorials to the victims in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa. “Over the years, visiting the memorials has been an opportunity to pay our respects to the victims and their families, and to show our appreciation to all those who have done so much to respond to and investigate the tragedy,” he said.

“The impact of the largest terrorist loss of life in our country’s history, affecting many Canadians, has not diminished with time. The trauma caused by the June 23, 1985 bombing has affected generations,” he added.

The terrorist attack killed 329 people. In addition, two baggage handlers at Narita Airport in Japan were killed by another bomb that was actually aimed at another aircraft.

In June 2017, Gary Bass, who served in various roles on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigation between 1994 and 2011, told the Hindustan Times that despite the decades that have passed, progress was still possible.

“You always hope that someone will come to their senses at some point. There are many cases where people feel intimidated or threatened. After the threat has gone – for various reasons, such as the person who made the threat is no longer there – sometimes people feel they can come forward and tell the police what they know,” Bass said.

While the task force’s investigation continued, only bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat has been convicted in connection with the tragedy. He was released from a halfway house by the Canadian Parole Board in February 2017 and allowed to return to his parents’ home.

Investigators had leads on at least three people, including one described as Mr. X, who spent a week with Reyat as he built the bomb used in the attack.

In a 2005 ruling, Justice IB Josephson of the Supreme Court of British Columbia found that the violent separatist Khalistan movement was the “motive” behind the attack and that Talwinder Singh Parmar was “generally recognized by both the prosecution and the defence as the leader of the conspiracy to commit these crimes”.

Although these facts have been confirmed in two separate investigations led by retired judge John Major and by Bob Rae, now Canada’s permanent representative to the United Nations, the separatist group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has offered 5 million Canadian dollars by “pro-Khalistan” elements for another commission of inquiry to investigate the discredited conspiracy theory that the incident had Indian roots.