RCMP Watch

Jim Brown, Ottawa (Canadian Press) - The RCMP told a reluctant witness in the Air India bombings that if she tried to back out of a commitment to testify against a key suspect she could be arrested and forced to appear in court.
But Inspector Doug Best, appearing yesterday at a public inquiry, insisted his words [...]

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Jim Brown, Ottawa (Canadian Press) - A Mountie who left the force seven years into the Air India investigation complained the RCMP weren’t doing enough to cultivate a key witness who could shed light on the 1985 bombing, a public inquiry has heard.
Fred Maile, in an exit interview after his retirement in May 1992, suggested [...]

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Jim Brown, Ottawa (Canadian Press) - The RCMP told a reluctant witness in the Air India bombing that if she tried to back out of a commitment to testify against a key suspect she could be arrested and forced to appear in court.But Insp. Doug Best, appearing Wednesday at a public inquiry, insisted his words [...]

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Canadian Press
The prime suspect in the 1985 Air India bombing admitted to a role in the attack years later under questioning by Indian police, a public inquiry has been told.
But Talwinder Singh Parmar, head of the militant Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa, reportedly insisted, during his 1992 interrogation, that he was a minor player and [...]

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Jim Brown, Canadian Press
More than two decades after Air India Flight 182 was blown from the sky, a public inquiry is set to hear about a purported confession by the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing.
Talwinder Singh Parmar, head of the militant Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa, was arrested shortly after the attack, but the [...]

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Kim Bolan, The Vancouver Sun
The watchdog monitoring Canada’s spy service wanted to hold an inquiry in 1989 into the agency’s conduct in the Air India bombing, but was shut down by the federal government.
Ron Atkey, a prominent lawyer who chaired the Security Intelligence Review Committee, revealed at the Air India inquiry yesterday he wanted major [...]

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Kim Bolan, National Post
Canada’s former top spy bluntly told the Air India inquiry Friday that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service did nothing wrong when agents erased hundreds of recorded wiretaps of key bombing suspects in 1985.
“Who cares quite frankly if we destroyed the tapes? I know the B.C. Crown cares. I know the RCMP cares [...]

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Bill Curry, Globe and Mail
The federal government delayed an investigation into how CSIS handled the Air India file partly out of fear that new revelations would drive up the cost of settling related lawsuits, an inquiry heard Thursday.
Ron Atkey, who chaired the Security Intelligence Review Committee overseeing the spy agency from 1984 to 1989, told [...]

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Jim Brown, (Canadian Press)
A retired Mountie says he thought he had a deal, within days of the 1985 Air India bombing, for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to hang on to any evidence it had that could help bring the perpetrators to justice.
Former superintendent Lyman Henschel told a public inquiry Monday that shortly after Fight [...]

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Canadian Press
The watchdogs who monitored Canada’s spy agency wanted to investigate its handling of the Air India bombing as early as 1988, but had to abandon their plans under pressure from senior federal bureaucrats, a public inquiry has heard.
Ron Atkey, former chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, testified Thursday that the main concern in [...]

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