Canadian agencies were warned of Air India attack in advance

The inquiry looking into the 1985 Air India bombing will be told Monday that government agencies were warned a number of times an airline attack was imminent, the CBC has learned.

The official line has been thatthe governmentknew of no such information, a key issue for the victims' families. Many of them testified last fall that Canadian law enforcement agencies had to know much more than they've let on, the CBC's Terry Milewski reported Sunday.

Jayashree Thampi, whose husband and daughter were among the329 people killed when the plane blew upover the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland,told the inquiryon Sept. 26, 2006: "In spite of prior warnings, the intelligence and the security agencies failed to prevent this tragedy. How did the system fail?"

For 22 years, the official storyline has been that the system did not fail because there were no specific warnings. But the inquiry —resuming Monday after lengthy wrangling over official secrecy —is about tohear of a months-long series of specific warnings about a coming attack on Air India.

The warningscame from police informers, the Indian government and Air India itself, which told theRCMP three weeks before the bombing on June 23, 1985, that Sikh extremists in Canada were planning to put bombs on Air India flights, Milewski reported.

Hints of all this emerged in a censored version of a top-secret 1992report prepared by a parliamentary committee, which described many warnings andconcluded: "There is no doubt that the government of India warned Canada on a number of occasions that Air India operations were about to be attacked."

The head ofthe Air India Victims' Families Association told CBC Newsworld on Monday they want the truth.

"We would like to know the truth, whether there were warnings," said Bal Gupta.

Airline failed to check bags

On Monday, the inquiry will hear that the RCMP failed to give details of the Indian intelligence tothe Canadian Security Intelligence Service,and that the airline itself failed to check bags against passengers, allowing an unaccompanied bag on to the plane, Milewski reported.

Furthermore, severalpolice informers inside the Sikh extremist movementalso reportedthe bomb plot. Paul Besso told CBC News he was spying on Sikh drug dealers when he heard about the plot.

"I was wearing a body pack and my van was wired so the RCMP actually have a transcript of a tape telling them of a plot against Air India days to a week before it happened," Besso said.

CSIS also followed the alleged plot leader, Talwinder Singh Parmar, to a test bombing on Vancouver Island, just three days after the tip from Air India about the bombs.

Vancouver police also monitored a meeting of Sikh militants, where one can be heard complaining that:"No ambassadors have been killed! What are you doing? Nothing!"

"You will see! Something will be done in two weeks,"another personreplied.

Informer overheard warning

At the same time, an informer at a Sikh temple in Malton, Ont., reported that Sikhs were being warned it would be unsafe to fly theweekly Air India Flight 182.

Since the bombing, Canadian governments have insisted the threat wasn't clear.

In 1987, then solicitor general James Kelleher said: "I should point out to the House that there was no indication that there was a specific threat to Flight 182."

In 2003, then solicitor general Wayne Easter said: "They were not in a position to know that there would be a terrorist attack on an Air India aircraft."

To date, lawyers for theHarper governmenthave echoed the same line at the inquiry, which is headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major.

The bombing of Flight 182 wasthe worst mass murder in Canada's history. A separate but linkedluggage bomb destined for a second Air India flight killed two Japanese baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.

Parmar was long considered a key suspect in the bombings, but was killed in 1992 in an alleged gun battle with police in India before any charges could be laid.

Only one person was convicted in the plot andthe trial of the RCMP's two main suspects ended in 2005with acquittals.