VANCOUVER, September 7, 2004
CP
Nineteen years after a terror attack left hundreds of Canadians strewn in the Atlantic amid the torn metal skeleton of a plane, the Air India trial has entered its final chapter.

Crown prosecutors and lawyers for accused bombers Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were told Tuesday they have until Oct.18 to prepare their final arguments.

When both sides rest, the weight of Canada's greatest mass murder trial will lie squarely on one man's shoulders.

Chief Justice Ian Josephson will determine a verdict alone. There is no jury.

``I don't envy him,'' says Vancouver defence lawyer Mark Jette, chairman of the Canadian Bar Association's criminal justice section.

``I'm sure none of his brothers and sisters on the bench envy him. It's a massive task,''

The epic 18-month legal battle has cost Canadian taxpayers millions, heard over 100 witnesses testify, and hinged on an investigation that began even before 331 people were killed by terrorists June 23, 1985.

The case against the two men relies on the testimony of friends and confidants who say the men admitted their guilt before the tragedy and in its aftermath.

Prosecutors allege the two were part of a group of Sikh separatists from B.C., hell-bent on avenging the Indian government's mistreatment of Sikhs.

The defence counters the Crown's case is circumstantial. No forensic evidence links either man to the crime. No recorded admission of their guilt exists.

``It will be our position that the Crown's case is simply too weak standing on it's own,'' said Bagri lawyer Michael Code on Tuesday, forshadowing their arguments to come.

Because the case is too enormous for oral arguments alone, legal teams will present their case in written summaries the size of huge textbooks.

Josephsen will rely on both sides to present their final arguments in straightforward, organized, digestible bites, Jette says.

The goal is to ``come up with a verdict that is going to stand the test of time.''

That may be hard to do in a trial that has set many precedents and separate rulings on evidence.

Lawyers will continue to argue over what evidence will be allowed in the final analysis in the coming weeks.

``I would have to think if there were convictions _ one or both_ that there is a very high likelihood of an appeal,'' Jette said.

The same might be said in an acquittal, although Crown appeals are less common, he said.

``We're talking about a case that _ if there are appeals _ will be around for years to come,'' Jette said.

So to avoid that nightmare, the two defence teams, Crown and judge will do their best to leave no legal loophole exposed.

They have a lot to review.

On February 24, 2003, Bagri and Malik entered the first day of trial, jointly facing eight charges including murder and conspiracy in the deaths of 331 people.

Over a historic 13 months, the Crown laid out their case.

Prosecutors alleged the two were part of a group of Sikh separatists from British Columbia, obsessed over terrorist plots to create a Sikh homeland in India.

The group blamed the Indian government for mistreating Sikhs in India. And when the Indian army raided the Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine _ that anger turned to rage.

The Crown alleged a plot was hatched by Talwinder Singh Parmar of Burnaby, B.C., the suspected Air India mastermind who was later killed in 1992 in a shootout with Indian police.

On June 23, 1985, the plan was realized, as two suitcases were loaded onto planes in Vancouver, laden with bombs, the Crown maintains.

Two baggage handlers died in a Tokyo airport when one suitcase exploded as it was being transferred to an Air India flight.

Almost an hour later, 329 people fell from the sky as Air India flight 182 was torn apart off the coast of Ireland, en route from Toronto to India.

In court, crew members who had been at the scene described desperate rescue efforts. They testified how they struggled to pull the bloated and twisted corpses from the sea.

The Crown projected photos of the gruesome scene and played a recording of the pilot's voice moments before the explosion. People in the gallery wept.

The Crown had to rely heavily on testimony from those who became entangled in the tragedy before and after it occurred.

But as witness after witness took the stand claiming memory loss and contradicting earlier claims, something else took centre stage at the trial: loyalty and fear.

Malik's former girlfriend tearfully proclaimed her love for him in court and said she could barely live with herself for betraying him by testifying.

Cloaked in the shroud of the witness protection program, fearing for her life and cut off from her children, she then testified how the Vancouver millionaire twice confessed to her his role in the bombings.

She said he regaled her with stories about booking the airline tickets that were used to put the bomb-laden suitcases onto two Air India jets.

But the woman dubbed Bagri's Vancouver mistress by RCMP investigators took a different route.

Court heard she cracked under guilt and spilled her secrets to an agent with Canada's spy agency who she had bonded with.

In interviews that took place over decades, the agent testified she told him how Bagri, a sawmill worker from Kamloops, B.C., came to her house on the eve of the bombing and asked to borrow her car to take bags to the airport.

But when it came time to damn Bagri in court, the woman claimed she couldn't remember the interviews.

The defence attacked the credibility of the two women, portraying them as unreliable, jilted ex's and disgruntled employees. Others were branded greedy liars.

One star witness and former FBI agent testified a smiling Bagri said ``we did this'' in a confession outside a New Jersey gas station weeks after the attacks.

The RCMP paid him $500,000 for his testimony and the defence painted him as a lying opportunist.

Bagri's team also won a key ruling that the controversial erasure by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of hundreds of intercepted phone calls by alleged conspirators violated his Charter rights.

The defence spent three months giving evidence and their own witnesses _ many who didn't fare well under the unrelenting cross-examination of prosecutors.

People who rallied to testify for Malik were exposed by the Crown as criminals and advocates of violence in the fight for a Sikh homeland.

Daljit Singh Sandhu, accused but never charged of being involved in the plot, had a heart attack just before he was set to address the court.

When he did testify _ describing himself as a peaceful, devout Sikh leader _ he shouted expletives at a Crown prosecutor who alleged he knew about the bombing plot and selectively warned friends to fly another day.

``Bullshit!'' Sandhu yelled from the witness box.

Another man said he spent several days in the witness box answering questions in English he didn't understand.

Throughout the trial, family members and supporters of the accused have come to watch the trial unfold. So have the families of the victims.

Grown men have sobbed in the courtroom lobby. Others let their anger spill over, screaming ``monster'' at the accused through the courtroom's bullet proof glass.

Others sat in reflective silence, caught up in the day 19 years ago when parents, siblings, and children were lost.

Both Malik and Bagri have been jailed for the last four years, since being charged with plotting the attack. Neither has entered the witness box in their own defence.