The Zundelsite - CSIS's sickening secrecy tactics

July 3, 2003

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!

Canada is displaying still more of its dictatorship trends. In the courts is a case against CSIS, Canada's civilian spy agency, about its foreknowledge - if that is all! - of an airline crash caused by a suitcase bomb that killed more than 300 people some 20 years ago. And yet SECRECY is written all over this trial!

This trial is of significance to Ernst Zundel since, as we have stated many times, CSIS knew of a parcel bomb in transit on a passenger plane, to be delivered to the Zundel-Haus, and yet did nothing to prevent delivery or even warn the Zundel-Haus inhabitants.

Zundel-Friends are watching this trial closely.

From Paul Fromm, Director of the CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION:

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SICKENING SECRECY SHROUDS AIR INDIA TRIAL

Dear Free Speech Supporter:

Part of a functioning democracy is openness or "transparency" to use the currrent jargon. How can citizens participate knowledgeably if they're given the mushroom treatment: kept in the dark and fed manure?

Canada's political elite is obsessed with secrecy -- usually to cover their graft, incompetence or criminality. Thus, it is a disturbing sign that the VANCOUVER SUN's lawyer couldn't even gain access to a courtroom to make a motion for release of warrants relating to the Air India case. The warrants involve a man alleged to be a CSIS agent at the very top of the Sikh extremist conspiracy that led to the bombing of Air India.

There's a serious issue here. Did the informant tell his CSIS masters of the plot? If not, he was a double-agent and should be pursued, but has not been. He's living unbothered in England. If he DID tell CSIS, then why was the plot not stopped before more than 300 travellers were killed? Was it CSIS incompetence? Was it ...? The mind boggles.

We do know from Andrew Mitrovica's book COVERT ENTRY that CSIS knew an anarchist bomb had been sent to Ernst Zundel in May, 1995. While they warned their mail snoops, they didn't warn Mr. Zundel or the postal employees who handled the parcel.

The public has a right to know and, as all too often happens, the courts merrily play along and impose information bans. The current Zundel case is a prime example. Both his several detention hearings and his current hearing in federal Court have heard secret testimony from CSIS, to which Mr. Zundel was denied all access.

Paul Fromm

Director

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION

B.C. judge dismisses application for information in Air India case

CAMILLE BAINS Canadian Press

Friday, June 27, 2003

VANCOUVER (CP) - A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed an application to release edited information from two search warrants involving a man who may have played a role in the Air India bombings.

Surjan Singh Gill was identified in court documents released last month as a possible informant for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. CSIS has denied an agent infiltrated a network of Sikh extremists believed to be involved in the Air India disaster.

The CBC had filed the application for the search warrants and information used to obtain them in relation to Gill, whose home and the vehicle of one of his relatives was searched by the RCMP in November 1996.

The documents were sealed until last week and were released with the contents of 10 paragraphs obliterated.

The released information showed that police were ready to charge Gill, along with five other men, with four counts including first-degree murder and conspiracy in the Air India bombings. But Gill, who now lives in England, has never been charged.

Justice Ian Josephson said in his written decision released Friday that informer privilege, involving two other individuals, is of such importance that it cannot be balanced against the public interest.

Josephson also denied the release of information obtained through wiretaps involving Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik.

Both men are accused in the deaths of 331 people in two separate bombings targeting Air India planes on June 23, 1985. Their trial resumes in the fall.

Court heard last week that the Crown is also against the release of the information based on the affidavit of an RCMP officer who said it would put the safety of the informants and their families at risk.

Josephson agreed with the Mountie.

Malik and Bagri's lawyers also opposed the release of such information, saying it is speculative, unreliable and prejudicial to their clients.

"In addition, Mr. Malik submits that the information contained in those paragraphs is inconsistent with the proposed evidence and theory of the Crown," Josephson said in his ruling.

A lawyer for Bagri said in court last week that he was aware of the identity of the source in one paragraph of the information to obtain the search warrants.

Josephson said the information has also been disclosed to the defence, increasing the safety risk.

"I am . . . of the opinion that due to the extraordinary nature of this case, the release of this information into the public domain would result in a significant and unwarranted increase in that risk," he wrote.

The Crown was also against the release of wiretaps because the Criminal Code makes it an offence to disclose such evidence without the consent of one of the participants in the private conversation.

The other men listed in the four counts include Malik and Bagri, who now face eight counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy and other charges.

Inderjit Singh Reyat, Hardial Singh Johal and Talwinder Singh Parmar are also named in the four counts.

Reyat was convicted in February of manslaughter for his part in the bombing of Air India Flight 182, and is serving a controversial five-year sentence.

All 329 crew and passengers - mostly Canadian - died when the aircraft plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985, after a suitcase bomb exploded.

Reyat has already served a 10-year sentence for his role in another suitcase bomb blast less than an hour earlier at Tokyo's Narita airport, where two baggage handlers died. The luggage was destined for another Air India flight.

Johal died in Vancouver last year after an illness, and Parmar, who was believed to be the mastermind of the bombing conspiracy, was killed by Indian police in 1992.

Parmar was also chief of the Babbar Khalsa, a terrorist group banned earlier this month by the Canadian government.

The group of Sikh separatists advocated violence in their quest to carve out an independent homeland from India's Punjab province.

The search warrant documents released last week said Gill had suddenly resigned as a member of the Babbar Khalsa, days before the Air India disaster, which resulted in Canada's worst mass murder case.

The Babbar Khalsa was one of the Sikh extremist organizations seeking revenge against the Indian government through its nationally owned airline.

That was after the Indian government ordered the Indian Army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, a year before the bombings.

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