Vancouver, October 28, 2004
The Vancouver Sun

The mysterious disappearance of an FBI memo containing information about an alleged confession by accused Air India bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri casts doubt on whether the confession was ever made, Bagri lawyer Michael Code said on Wednesday. Code said the memo in question, dated Sept. 26, 1985 and titled "Indian Terrorist Matters," was supposed to contain incriminating information that was provided to the FBI about Bagri from an informant known as John.

John was the key Crown witness against Bagri. He testified that the B.C. man confessed his involvement in the Air India bombing outside a New Jersey gas station within weeks of the June 1985 attack.

Retired FBI special agent Ron Parrish testified at the international terrorism trial last spring that John told him about the confession in a Sept. 25, 1985 meeting. But the only memo located by the FBI close to the Sept. 25 meeting is a telex dated Sept. 27, which provides information about B.C. Babbar Khalsa members taking credit for the terrorist attack, but there is no specific reference to a Bagri confession. The Sept. 26 memo, written by Parrish, is referred to in a 1989 FBI report and likely would have contained the most detailed recounting of what the key Crown witness told the FBI at the time, Code told Justice Ian Bruce Josephson. But it has never surfaced in the 19-year-long investigation.

Code suggested that if a confession in a mass murder had been relayed to Parrish on Sept. 25, 1985, there would be some documentary record of it. Parrish said he recalls John telling him about the Bagri confession during the Sept. 25, 1985 meeting, but admitted he did not pass on details of the alleged Bagri comments to the RCMP, his FBI partner or his superiors. Code said that if Bagri had confessed to John as the informant claimed, the FBI agent would likely have done a great deal more to follow-up on such important information about a terrorist attack. Parrish's failure to do anything to corroborate the alleged confession, "requires you to believe he is incompetent or negligent," Code said.

He said he is not trying to attack the reputation of the retired agent, but is simply using common sense to reconstruct a more likely scenario.

Bagri and co-accused Ripudaman Singh Malik are charged with eight counts, including first-degree murder and conspiracy, in two June 23, 1985 bombings that targeted Air India and killed 331 persons. The Crown alleges the two were part of a B.C.-based conspiracy to target India's national airline in retaliation for the Indian army's attack in June 1984 on the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.