Air-India witness 'put up' to lie, Crown says

VANCOUVER, Aug 20, 2004
The Globe and Mail

A defence witness who attempted to discredit a key prosecution witness in the Air-India international terrorism trial was part of a conspiracy to give false evidence, prosecutor Richard Cairns says.

"The Crown theory is that Mr. Jit has been put up to this by somebody," Mr. Cairns said of the witness, Kamal Jit, yesterday. "He is not alone. He is supported by other people."

Mr. Jit was the first of four people who were to be called by the defence to undermine the testimony of a central prosecution witness. Mr. Jit's testimony over the past two weeks has been part of a plan, Mr. Cairns told the court.

"He's here lying. . . . He's not here on his own. He had to be set up to give this type of evidence," the prosecutor said.

Defence lawyer Richard Peck told the court he has seen nothing to indicate a conspiracy to call false evidence. On the contrary, the prosecution team has intimidated three potential defence witnesses, pushing them to back away from earlier statements to the defence team's lawyer and investigators in India, he said.

Mr. Cairns and two colleagues on the prosecution team, accompanied by four police officers, travelled to Punjab after the key prosecution witness testified, Mr. Peck said. The prosecutors went to the local police station, where they waited for the arrival of the three potential witnesses.

"Two vehicles, with police officers [who were] armed, went to the farms of these witnesses to pick them up, and took them to the police station. They were segregated and brought into interview rooms, where there were six people present, including a member of [India's] Central Bureau of Investigation, two RCMP officers and three Crown counsel.

The potential witnesses were "extremely frightened," Mr. Peck said. "Those are the facts."

Mr. Cairns replied that Mr. Peck was mistaken. "His version of events, what happened in India, is entirely incorrect. It's wrong. I was there. I talked to these people. Nobody was afraid. It was very congenial."

Mr. Justice Ian Bruce Josephson, who is presiding over the trial without a jury in the British Columbia Supreme Court, told the lawyers to stick to dealing with testimony in court. "I cannot sort out that scene," he said. Questioning of Mr. Jit during cross-examination should be based on testimony in court, the judge said.

Outside court, Mr. Cairns said he was not suggesting defence lawyers had anything to do with a conspiracy to call false evidence. He declined to elaborate.

Mr. Peck told reporters the three potential witnesses would probably not be brought from India to testify at the trial. He will explain why in court, he said.

The potential witnesses lived in the same village as the family of a central prosecution witness who testified against Ajaib Singh Bagri, who is charged along with Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik in the deaths of 329 people in the bombing of Air-India Flight 182 and another blast at Narita airport in Japan that killed two baggage handlers.

The prosecution witness, an informant for the FBI told the court this year that Mr. Bagri admitted his involvement in the bombings in a conversation shortly after the disaster. A court order prohibits the media from identifying the witness.

The allegation of a conspiracy to lie in court came during the seventh day of testifying by Mr. Jit, who said the prosecution witness was willing to change his testimony if he received money from the Bagri family or was coached by the defence lawyers.

But under intensive questioning by Mr. Cairns, Mr. Jit provided different versions of his conversations with the prosecution witness and repeatedly contradicted his own testimony.

Yesterday, he was caught lying. He told the court he had not met with Mr. Peck before testifying in the trial. Mr. Peck told the court when Mr. Jit was not in the room that he met with Mr. Jit before he was called to the witness box.