Air India inquiry takes 007 turn with talk of 'rogue' secret agents

Ottawa: A former federal prosecutor has resurrected cloak-and-dagger theories about the 1985 Air India bombing, speculating that shadowy agents of the Indian secret service may have been involved in the affair.
Graham Pinos told the Air India inquiry Thursday that his information came from Mel Deschenes, former head of counter-terrorism for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Pinos said Deschenes raised the topic in a conversation just four days before Air India Flight 182 went down with the loss of 329 lives.
He recalled that Deschenes - speaking over drinks beside a hotel pool in Los Angeles - told him "there are rogue elements of the Indian secret service operating in Canada in the East Indian community . . . the Sikh community."
"He also said they were non-responsive, they were out of control, those were his fears. I didn't ask him any questions about it because I didn't have any knowledge or basis on which to ask."
Last May, Pinos testified that Deschenes told him during the same conversation that he feared unnamed extremists would one day bring down a plane. In retrospect, said Pinos, that seemed to indicate that CSIS had advance warning of the bombing but failed to head it off.
There was no mention, in the previous testimony, of any link to suspected secret agents from India. That was because Pinos was testifying in May under national security restrictions that have since been lifted.
On Thursday, Pinos said Deschenes was adamant that Indian agents were active in Canada, and added that he made the same point himself when he was questioned years later by a legal team headed by Len Daoust, a British Columbia special prosecutor.
25/10/07 The Canadian Press

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Categories: Air India - International Oct 2007, Foreign Oct 2007, Safety Oct 2007