Vancouver, Feb 28, 2004: Police informant says he was told that, in
a startling coincidence on the day of the deadly Air-India disaster,
the police went to speak with Ajaib Singh Bagri moments before Flight
182 was blown out of the sky killing 329 people.
"He said that just a few minutes before the Air-India
crash, the Canadian police came to his house and told him not to do
anything wrong in Canada, or warned him not to do anything wrong in
Canada," the informant said Mr. Bagri told him a few years after
the disaster.
"He said that, after the police left, he got the
news of the crash," the informant said in a statement to the RCMP
on March 14, 2000, obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The informant, who lives in the United States, is expected
to begin testifying next week against Mr. Bagri in the sensational Air-India
international terrorism trial. Mr. Justice Ian Bruce Josephson, of the
B.C. Supreme Court, ruled yesterday that a publication ban prohibiting
the media from identifying the informant will remain in place indefinitely.
The man's witness statement, which also includes several
comments appearing to link Mr. Bagri to the plot to blow up the plane,
is the first account to surface about activities of the RCMP on the
day of the crash 19 years ago
Neither RCMP nor the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service have ever been required to account publicly for their multimillion-dollar
investigation into the disaster.
A top official at Canada's spy agency speculated a year
after the crash that either CSIS or the Mounties might have deterred
the bombing if they had been more aggressive in pursuing information
collected from people under surveillance. RCMP spokesman Sergeant John
Ward said this week that the lengthy investigation will likely come
under scrutiny when the Air-India trial is over. He said he could not
comment about the witness's statement until after the trial.
The RCMP met with the informant on several occasions
in 1996 and in 1997. Defence lawyers for Mr. Bagri have indicated they
intend to challenge the witness's credibility and to show that his accounts
of conversations with Mr. Bagri are not reliable.
In a witness statement dated March 4, 1997, the informant
told police he spoke to Mr. Bagri a few weeks after the Air-India disaster
in 1985.
The informant was involved with a Sikh organization
that some people were blaming for the disaster. Mr. Bagri told him,
"why are they bothering you. We did this," the informant stated.
Three years later, the informant told police about a
conversation he had with Mr. Bagri in September, 1987.
"I was talking to him about the Narita bombing
on the ground and one in the air and how this happened, why this happened.
And then he said: ' We were expecting one hour earlier.' My understanding
was that they were expecting for that other bomb to go off in the air
also," he said, referring to an explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport
54 minutes before the Air-ndia explosion. Two people were killed in
the Narita explosion.
The informant also recalled a conversation on Dec. 26,
1987, when Mr. Bagri was trying to raise $40,000 at a Sikh temple in
New York to pay his lawyers. The witness said he asked Mr. Bagri how
to build a bomb
"He said that he don't want to open his mouth because
' the walls also have ears'. Further, he mentioned that 'two of us know'
and he also said, 'if a third person or third party come to know about
this, we can go to jail."
The informant said he spoke to Mr. Bagri in New York
in April of 1989 about Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only person to be convicted
in the Air-India case.
At that time, the Canadian government was in the process
of extraditing Mr. Reyat from England to stand trial in Vancouver.
"I told him that you people will be in trouble
if Inderjit Singh Reyat will co-operate with the police. He said: 'Don't
worry, he fucking don't know nothing. Only two of us know that.'-"
Internal police memos show that, at the end of each
meeting, the RCMP made payments of up to $400 to compensate the informant
for parking and other expenses.
The informant asked in February, 1997, what he would
be paid to testify in court.
The RCMP told him they could give him money "to
assist him in providing protection for himself and his family,"
but they would not pay for his testimony.
"The source commented that he had phrased the question
wrong. It was agreed that a price could be negotiated, but this was
not the time to do this," the memo says.
The man proposed $500,000 (U.S.) at a meeting on Sept. 30, 1999. The
RCMP advised him that the amount "appeared to be high," an internal
police memo says. After a round of negotiations, the Mounties made a lump
sum payment of $300,000 (U.S.) — $460,000 in Canadian currency —
days after Mr. Bagri was arrested in October, 2000.
The informant asked for an additional $200,000 (U.S.) in December of
2003 and again a few weeks ago, the court heard yesterday. The RCMP told
him that no more money would be paid.