RCMP Watch

Ottawa (Canadian Press) - Former RCMP commissioner Norm Inkster acknowledged the force put a positive spin on its relations with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, soft-pedalling conflicts with the spy agency during a 1992 review of the Air India bombing.
“It didn’t serve any organization well, whether the RCMP or CSIS, to be criticizing one another,” [...]

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Former RCMP commissioner Norm Inkster has acknowledged the force put a positive spin on its relations with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and soft-pedalled conflicts with the spy agency during a 1992 review of the Air India bombing.
“It didn’t serve any organization well, whether the RCMP or CSIS, to be criticizing one another,” Inkster told [...]

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Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) - The Air India investigation was hampered by the lack of co-operation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in handing over information it had collected on suspects, former RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster told the bombing inquiry Thursday.
Mr. Inkster, who headed the [...]

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A Canadian spy who cultivated Sikh informants after the 1985 Air India terrorist attack told an inquiry yesterday that the RCMP cost him his most promising source for identifying the bombers.
Neil Eshleman was a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent in Vancouver when he met a nervous source identified yesterday as Mr. A, who he felt [...]

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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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