Vancouver; June 15, 2004
Globe and Mail

The wives of suspects in the Air-India international terrorism trial should be called to testify about the activities of their husbands, prosecutor Joe Bellows said yesterday.

The wives could provide the best available evidence on what their spouses discussed at one of the last meetings before the suspects are alleged to have bought airline tickets used to put bombs on flights from Vancouver, he said.

The prosecution says defendant Ripudaman Singh Malik and suspect Hardial Singh Johal met at the home of alleged Air-India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar on June 18, 1985, to go over plans for the bombings five days later that killed 331 people.

However, defence lawyers at the trial have said the three men met at that time to discuss a lawsuit against an Indo-Canadian newspaper. To back up their suggestion, they asked the court yesterday to accept an entry in a diary kept by Mr. Johal as evidence in the trial.

"In the evening, there was a meeting about Indo-Canadian paper at [Mr. Parmar's] house. Malik and others came," Mr. Johal wrote in his diary under the date of June 18, 1985.

Both Mr. Johal and Mr. Parmar are dead. Mr. Parmar was killed in India in 1992. Mr. Johal died of natural causes in 2002. Neither was ever charged in the Air-India case.

Mr. Bellows dismissed the journal entry as contrived, self-serving evidence that cannot be tested in cross-examination. Mr. Johal could have written the entry after the Air-India disaster in case he had to prove his innocence, he said.

Before accepting the entry as evidence, the court is required by legal precedents to consider whether other sources of information are available, Mr. Bellows added.

Mr. Malik's wife, Raminder, and the widows of Mr. Parmar and Mr. Johal likely know the purpose of the 1985 meeting, he said.

Mr. Justice Ian Bruce Josephson asked whether the spouses would have firsthand information about the meeting.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents, who had the Parmar home under surveillance in 1985, saw neither Mr. Johal's nor Mr. Malik's wife at the Parmar residence that day, the court has heard. Mr. Parmar's wife was seen putting out garbage at 9:15 a.m. She left the house at 1:32 p.m. and was not seen again on June 18, 1985.

The meeting of alleged conspirators took place in the evening. Mr. Parmar was seen at his home at 7:29 p.m., talking with two men who were later identified as Mr. Johal and Mr. Malik. When CSIS surveillance stopped at 9:50, the three men were still in discussion.

How would the spouses know what the husbands were talking about, if they were not at the meeting, the judge asked.

Even if they were not at the meeting, they would be aware of the lawsuit if it were as important as defence counsel suggested, Mr. Bellows said.

Judge Josephson reserved his decision on whether Mr. Johal's journal entry should be accepted as evidence without hearing from the suspects' wives.

Mr. Malik and another B.C. man, Ajaib Singh Bagri, are on trial for murder in the deaths of 331 people killed in two bomb blasts on June 23, 1985.