"Poisonous" environment stalled Air India probe, says retired Mountie

Within three years of the Air India bombing, only a single RCMP officer was dedicated full-time to the probe into the country's worst-ever mass murder, the Ottawa inquiry into the terrorist attack heard Wednesday.
Retired RCMP Staff Sgt. Bob Solvason testified that the investigation was stalled in the late 1980s and that the work environment on the Vancouver-based task force became poisonous.
He said he finally requested a transfer because he was harassed on the job by his supervisor and all of his suggestions about how to advance the criminal investigation into the June 23, 1985, bombing that killed 329 were rejected.
By 1988, Solvason said most of the RCMP resources were dedicated to the related prosecution of Inderjit Singh Reyat, in the same-day bombing at Tokyo's Narita Airport that killed two baggage handlers.
Just one RCMP member continued to work Air India specifically, he told inquiry Commissioner John Major.
Solvason said that in the early years of the investigation, "the task force ran as well as anybody could ever possibly expect it to run.
"Everyone was there doing whatever they could. It was the number 1 priority in the force and there wasn't anything that anyone wouldn't do within the legal limits to see that be successful," he said.
"During the first couple of years everything I think that could have been done was done. Everybody worked very hard. After that things began to degenerate a bit."
05/12/07 Kim Bolan/CanWest News Service/Canada.com, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Dec 2007, Foreign Dec 2007, NACIL Dec 2007, Safety Dec 2007