Air India revelations add to grief

Almost 22 years have passed since Air India Flight 182 blew up, killing all 329 people aboard. Yet new revelations continue to seep out in the latest Air India Inquiry under way in Ottawa.
For the anguished families of those killed, the latest revelation by James Bartleman, the lieutenant-governor of Ontario, must add to their grief, anger and shock in exponentially greater levels than it does for the rest of us.
Bartleman was the senior intelligence official with the Department of External Affairs at the time. He testified Thursday before retired justice John Major that he saw a document from India warning that the Air India flight scheduled for the weekend of June 22-23, 1985, was being targeted by Sikh extremists.
Bartleman testified that he immediately took the warning he received from "the daily intercept package" to an RCMP official.
"He flushed and told me, of course he had seen it and he didn't need me to tell him how to do his job," Bartleman testified
The next thing Bartleman recalls was hearing of the "downing of the aircraft."
At that point, Bartleman would have known that the RCMP clearly didn't take that information he had seen -- and passed on --seriously enough. He must have anticipated that some serious butt-covering would be going on as a result.
And yet, he did nothing more with his knowledge until now.
Yesterday, in a news conference, Bartleman tried to explain why he has waited so long to come forward.
He deserves credit for doing so, but his long silence is baffling. If only he had made a stink about this then, who knows what the outcome would have been.
05/05/07 Licia Corbella/London Free Press, Canada

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Air India May 2007, Foreign May 2007, Safety May 2007