Officials questioned sincerity of Air India's bomb threat concerns

Air India allegedly raised concerns about bomb threats so often in the early 1980s, that officials believed the airline was simply trying to get extra police security at no cost, the Air India bombing inquiry heard Tuesday.
At a meeting of RCMP, Justice Department and Transport Canada officials in January 1986, officials discussed the concerns Air India supposedly raised before almost every flight that took off during a two-year period in the early 1980s.
The details of the meeting — which took place after Air India Flight 182 blew up in 1985 — were chronicled in a memo written by Warren Sweeney, a former RCMP intelligence analyst who testified at the inquiry in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoon.
Anil Kapoor, one of the lawyers for the inquiry, read the memo out during Sweeney's testimony.
"It was learned that every flight was preceded by a letter outlining a threat to Air India," Kapoor read. "It was thought by the people present [at the meeting] that this was Air India's way of having increased security for their flights at no cost to them."
Kapoor asked Sweeney if the memo was an accurate account of the meeting, and Sweeney said it was.
"Is that what everyone at the meeting thought?" Kapoor asked.
"Yes," responded Sweeney, who worked for the RCMP's national criminal intelligence branch from 1984 to 1986.
The inquiry is probing the investigation that followed the bombing of Flight 182, which blew up over the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985, while flying from Canada to India. All 329 people on board were killed.
A separate luggage bomb meant for another Air India flight killed two Japanese baggage handlers at a Tokyo airport.
The meeting Sweeney detailed in his memo was called as government lawyers were busy preparing for an anticipated flood of lawsuits from victims' families, the inquiry learned.
Soma Ray-Ellis, the lawyer representing Air India at the inquiry, said the memo gives the wrong perception about the number of threats the airline reported to officials.
"From 1982 to 1985, there were 17 instances," she said. "That certainly doesn't qualify as every week. This is an attempt to explain away why they were not successful at doing their job."
Earlier Tuesday, the inquiry heard of a warning sent from Air India to its international affiliates, including Toronto and Montreal, a warning that talked of a possible hijacking.
John Henry, a former CSIS intelligence analyst, testified at the inquiry that such information would have needed corroboration before it was considered a definite threat.
08/05/07 CBC - The Hour, Canada

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