Suspects had clearance to airport months after Flight 182, probe told

Ottawa: Ten people suspected of ties to Sikh terrorist groups had ready access to sensitive areas at Vancouver International Airport more than a year after the Air India bomb plot, according to an intelligence report presented to a federal commission of inquiry Wednesday.
The 10 were identified in late 1986 when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service ran the names of the employees of an airport cleaning contractor against a database of people belonging to the International Sikh Youth Federation and the Babbar Khalsa organization.
This prompted CSIS officials to warn on Nov. 12, 1986, that this gap in the security screening of airport workers “could prove embarrassing and fatal” if any of the cleaners “become implicated in an incident similar to Air India Flight 182.”
Flight 182 was blown out of the sky 17 months earlier, on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 aboard. Investigators believe Sikh extremists planted the bomb in luggage that was checked in for a CP Air flight in Vancouver and then transferred to Air India in Toronto.
The federal inquiry heard evidence Wednesday of security lapses at the Vancouver and Toronto airports that continued for months after the bombing.
The post-bombing CSIS security report said the agency obtained the names of the 159 people working for the cleaning company at the Vancouver airport from a source whose identity remains secret.
The heavily censored version of the report that was made public Wednesday does not contain any of the names.
It says, though, that when the list of 159 was run against a database it produced “10 hits.” It said four names were linked to the International Sikh Youth Federation and seven with Babbar Khalsa.
24/05/07 Jeff Sallot/Globe and Mail, Canada

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