RCMP Watch

Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) - RCMP security cameras installed at the Surrey home of newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer were not working the night he was assassinated in 1998, the Air India inquiry heard Thursday.

And Hayer’s son Dave and daughter-in-law Isabelle told the inquiry they learned about the faulty equipment only this week when they arrived in Ottawa to testify before inquiry Commissioner John Major.

“To find this information out, I tell you, is really tough,” Isabelle Hayer testified.
“We placed a lot of trust in the RCMP . . . and now to discover this is pretty tough and it is pretty hard.”

Dave Hayer, Liberal MLA for Surrey-Tynehead, said he had always assumed police had received some description of his father’s killers because of the cameras — one of which was pointed at the driveway to the garage where Hayer was shot on Nov. 18, 1998.

“It’s only when I read these documents that I found out, actually, nothing worked,” Hayer said.

No one was ever charged in Tara Hayer’s death.

The cameras were installed in July 1998 after police learned of a possible hit list with Hayer’s name on it, as well as those of a number of moderate temple leaders and the woman who would become the star witness in the Air India trial.

At the time of his murder, Tara Hayer had given police statements incriminating Ajaib Singh Bagri, one of two men later acquitted in the terrorism plot that left 331 dead in 1985.

Dave Hayer described a difficult decade for the extended family because of threats against the patriarch, who continued to expose Sikh terrorists through his Indo-Canadian Times newspaper.

All but one of the threats went unprosecuted.

“My dad would say . . . the way our system works unless somebody has a gun in their hand and is ready to shoot you, police will say there is not really enough evidence,” Dave Hayer testified.

He suggested a more stringent use of hate-crime legislation could aid in prosecuting those responsible for publicly supporting terrorists and creating an environment of intimidation.

He cited as an example of the problem a Surrey parade last April organized by the non-profit Dasmesh Darbar society. Several floats displayed portraits of Air India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar as a martyr.

Police and politicians showed up to support the parade, which Hayer said would never have happened if the floats had displayed pictures of Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler.

“As a gift to my father, if this inquiry under Justice Major can make some good recommendations then all Canadians can feel proud that we are safer, we are better off, we will not have another Air India bombing. We will not have another case where a journalist is shot,” Dave Hayer said.

Isabelle Hayer told Major that a change is necessary to stop those with terrorist and criminal links from running non-profit societies and charities in Canada.

“We need some sense of ethical standards and accountability,” she said.

Right up until his death, Tara Hayer was trying to get more done about the threats on his life.

In a March 1998 letter to Surrey RCMP entered as an exhibit Thursday, he said the threats against him were not being taken seriously enough by police.

“Given that these threats are escalating and becoming more severe in nature, I respectfully request your assistance in the investigation of these threats which I hope will cease as a result,” he wrote to then chief superintendent Terry Smith, referring to the 1988 attempt on his life that left him paralysed.

“Time is of the essence. I am not capable of defending myself as easily as I used to when I could walk.”

Dave Hayer said he had urged his father for years to tone down criticism in his newspaper of violent Sikh extremists so as to limit the risk to his security.

“Maybe it is time to move on and let someone else deal with this issue because you have paid a heavy price,” he recalled telling his father.

But the elder Hayer said it was his duty as a Canadian to stand up for freedom of expression no matter how many threats came his way.

The night Hayer was murdered, Dave and other family members raced to the newspaper office to make sure the assassination was covered in the next day’s edition.

“That was the first time that I could really understand why we have to stand up for the values we want to promote. Until then I thought he had risked too much,” Dave Hayer said.