VANCOUVER, November 17, 2004
The Globe and Mail

The prosecution at the Air-India trial has urged the court to disregard evidence from Canada's spy agency about a crucial moment in the case, saying information from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service cannot be trusted.

Prosecutor Richard Cairns attacked the spy agency yesterday in an effort to undermine evidence from a CSIS agent that contradicted a key component of the case against defendant Ajaib Singh Bagri.

The court has heard that a CSIS surveillance team saw Mr. Bagri's car outside the Vancouver home of alleged Air-India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar on June 21, 1985, the evening before bags with explosives were checked on flights from Vancouver connecting to Air-India flights.

Mr. Bagri lived in Kamloops at that time, but the prosecution says he was in Vancouver to help take the bags to the airport. Placing his car in Vancouver provided circumstantial evidence indicating he was in the city.

However, CSIS also reported that the man who got out of the car outside Mr. Parmar's house was not Mr. Bagri.

CSIS saw a man, woman and child get out of the car and go into Mr. Parmar's house. The agency acknowledged it could not identify the man who went out of Mr. Bagri's car but the agent who spotted the car said she was certain the man was not Mr. Bagri.

Mr. Cairns said CSIS was repeatedly wrong in the identification of people in the weeks before and after the Air-India disaster and was wrong once again in concluding that it was not Mr. Bagri getting out of Mr. Bagri's car.

The prosecutor cited several examples of CSIS mistakes. The spy agency did surveillance on June 9, 1985, in Vancouver of a couple they believed was Mr. Parmar and his wife. But by the end of the day, they realized the man they were following was not Mr. Parmar. They subsequently discovered Mr. Parmar was in Toronto on June 9, 1985.

"One would think that, after almost two months of surveillance, they would know who the target is and what he looks like," Mr. Cairns said. "It is obvious that CSIS was way off the mark."

In another example, CSIS surveillance reports show agents saw several men on several occasions at Mr. Parmar's house whom they could never identify. The spies "were not even sure which of the turbaned men Parmar was," he said.

"This is indicative of the quality and dependability of the surveillance, even though the teams were positioned right in front of [Mr. Parmar's] house," Mr. Cairns said.

On another occasion, CSIS mixed up Mr. Bagri and Mr. Parmar, misidentifying Mr. Bagri as Mr. Parmar after several hours of surveillance, the prosecutor said.

The prosecution previously told the court it accepted the unidentified man outside Mr. Parmar's house was not Mr. Bagri. However, Mr. Cairns yesterday backed away from the admission.

Surveillance was discontinued 15 minutes after CSIS first spotted Mr. Bagri's car arriving at Mr. Parmar's residence, Mr. Cairns told the court. It's impossible to know how long the car was there or if Mr. Bagri arrived or departed after the surveillance ended, he said.

Mr. Bagri and Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik are charged with murder in the death of 331 people who were killed in two bomb explosions on June 23, 1985, on opposite sides of the world.