Bomb plots were hatched as CSIS watched

Vancouver: On June 18, 1985, police and government officials met in Ottawa to review the level of security to counter terrorist threats in Canada against the Indian government.
On the other side of the country, the alleged mastermind of the country's deadliest terrorist attack went jogging with his son.
Talwinder Singh Parmar headed out the front door of his Vancouver home with his son shortly before officials in Ottawa went for lunch. Mr. Parmar returned breathless less than 15 minutes later.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service knew this because CSIS had set up a monitoring station across the street from Mr. Parmar's house. They wrote down licence plates and took photographs as men in turbans came to the Parmar home that evening, and they recorded his phone calls.
But in the days leading up to the Air India massacre on June 23, 1985, the sleuths failed to see that terrorists were reserving tickets for Air India flights, buying items for two home-made bombs and checking in two pieces of luggage, each holding an explosive, onto two different flights leaving the Vancouver airport.
The terrorists aimed to have two simultaneous explosions on Air India airplanes on opposite sides of the world. Tickets for the two flights were bought on June 19, 1985.
Martine Donahue, who was a reservations agent for the now-defunct airline CP Air, has a vivid recollection of the telephone call.
The caller spoke good English with a slight South Asian accent. He said he was making a booking for two friends who wanted tickets for a flight connecting to an Air India flight. She booked a non-stop CP Air flight to Montreal, but then found out that the Air India flight was full. She put him on a waiting list and asked about the second flight.
The second person was connecting with an Air India flight to Bangkok. She booked a CP Air flight to Tokyo, where the passenger would change to an Air India flight to Bangkok.
She expected to hear an excited reaction to the steep price of around $3,000. But he was very pleasant, she recalled. She took down the name of the two passengers, a phone number of 437-3216, and hung up. The call was made at 5:52 p.m. and she completed the reservation at 6:13 p.m.
After the bombs went off, CSIS went back and listened closely to wiretaps that had been placed on Mr. Parmar's phone. He spoke to Hardial Singh Johal at 5:15 p. m, just before the phone call to CP Air. Mr. Parmar asked if he “has written the story.” Mr. Johal said he had not. Mr. Parmar said he should.
Mr. Johal spoke again to Mr. Parmar at 6:20 p.m., a few minutes after Ms. Donahue completed the reservations.
The RCMP also discovered that the telephone number — 437-3216 — was an old, discontinued number of Mr. Johal's family.
CSIS saw Mr. Parmar leave his house at 6:39 p.m. Less than an hour later, CP Air received a phone call to change the ticket. A reservation agent changed the eastbound ticket to Toronto, instead of Montreal.
Police later figured out why the ticket was changed. The CP Air flight was landing at Dorval, and the Air India flight was leaving from Mirabel. The passenger would be required to transfer the suitcase.
The airlines tried to ensure baggage was not sent to a destination without its owner. But for the terrorists, connecting to the Air India flight in Toronto, where domestic and international flights left from the same terminal, the problem would be avoided.
The passenger was still wait-listed on the flight from Toronto. The bags would not be automatically transferred if the ticket on the Air India flight was not confirmed. The passenger would have to pick up the suitcase from CP Air and check in again on the Air India flight in Toronto.
Earlier on this day, Inderjit Singh Reyat went shopping for a six-volt relay, which was used as a switching device. He had previously bought two 12-volt relays but then discovered during a test blast on June 4, 1985, that they did not work reliably with the timing device. He exchanged one of the 12-volt relays for a six-volt relay on June 5, 1985, but did not exchange the second relay until June 19, 1985. He had bought other parts for the bomb in May and early June.
The tickets were picked up at the CP Air office downtown shortly after noon on June 20, 1985. Ticket agent Gerry Duncan recalled a South Asian man in his early 40s, who spoke English with a slight accent.
At the request of the unidentified man, Mr. Duncan changed the name of the passenger on both the eastbound and the westbound tickets. He also changed the westbound ticket to a one-way flight to Bangkok.
That evening, CSIS watched people arrive at the Parmar home. “It appears as though a meeting could be taking place,” an agent noted.
The monitoring station on Mr. Parmar's street was closed at 9:45 p.m. on June 21, 1985, the evening before the suitcases with bombs were taken to the airport, so CSIS did not have Mr. Parmar under surveillance on the day they were transported.
Around 6:30 a.m. on the day of the flight, CP Air agent Abdulaziz Premji received a call from a person calling himself Manjit Singh. He asked if the flight from Toronto to New Delhi was confirmed. When Mr. Premji said he was still wait-listed for Air India, Mr. Singh asked about sending his baggage straight to New Delhi, even though he was wait-listed. Mr. Premji said he could not do that unless the flight was confirmed.
Shortly after 7:30 a.m., check-in agent Jeanne Bakermans took the luggage for the flight to Toronto. The passenger looked like a westernized South Asian. He asked her to tag his bag to New Delhi because he had been confirmed on the Air India flight.
The ticket showed that he had been wait-listed; the reservation computer showed the same thing. She told him she could not check his bags to New Delhi.
The passenger was insistent. He said he had phoned earlier and had been told that his seat on Air India was confirmed. He said he would go get his brother to back up his story.
The people lined up behind him were growing restless. Ms. Bakermans told him four times to check in Toronto. As he became more obstreperous, she relented. She marked his bag to be transferred onto the Air India flight.
“I was not a sloppy agent,” Ms. Bakermans said this week.
The decision to tag the bag for the Air India flight has been hard on her, she said. “But I cannot change what happened.”
In her testimony in court, she said she had not been warned or given special instructions about extra security before June 22, 1985.
The flight left at 9:18 a.m. on June 22, 1985. The bomb was in baggage in the cargo hold. But the ticket for seat 10B was never used. The suitcase had been put on the plane without ensuring the passenger had claimed his seat.
12/05/07 Robert Matas/Globe and Mail, Canada

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