Man admits trying to kill witness tied to Air India case

Metro Vancouver: A 33-year-old Surrey truck driver has pleaded guilty to attempted murder for plotting to kill a witness who provided police with information about the unsolved murder of Tara Singh Hayer.
Rajinder Singh Soomel was arrested last October by the special RCMP task force probing the assassination of the newspaper publisher and prospective Air India witness.
He was charged with attempted murder after the RCMP obtained evidence of an unfolding conspiracy to kill Hardip Singh Uppal.
Uppal had come to investigators with information about a series of gangland hits - some allegedly involving Soomel's brother Robbie - as well as the November 1998 shooting death of Hayer, the publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times.
A sentencing hearing for Raj Soomel is scheduled for Surrey Provincial Court on March 28, Neil MacKenzie, of the attorney-general's Criminal Justice Branch, told The Vancouver Sun.
MacKenzie said Soomel pleaded guilty during a court appearance March 13.
The charge against Soomel is the second laid since last August by the special team involved in the multi-murder investigation dubbed Project Expedio.
In August, Soomel's younger brother Robbie, 28, and 35-year-old Tajinder Singh (T.J.) Bains were charged with first-degree murder in the November 1997 targeted shooting of Jason Herle in Abbotsford.
Robbie Soomel remains a suspect in the Hayer slaying, alleged details of which emerged in explosive testimony in an unrelated gang murder trial four years ago.
Insp. Kevin Hackett, the RCMP officer in charge of the task force, said Sunday that the Raj Soomel plea is good for the continuing investigation.
Raj Soomel has been in custody since being arrested Oct. 5. He was denied bail in late November. Before that, he lived with his wife, young child and his parents, Iqbal and Mohinder, in the Fleetwood neighbourhood of Surrey.
He and his brother grew up in south Vancouver in a house targeted by gunmen in September 2000. Raj and a friend suffered gunshot wounds in the attack. When Vancouver police arrived, investigators found several shell casings and an AK-47 assault rifle at the scene.
No charges were ever laid, but a few days later, a suspect in the shooting, Gurpreet Singh Sohi, was gunned down in his Delta basement suite.
It was during one of the trials related to Sohi's murder that alleged details of the Hayer murder plot were publicly revealed.
The trial heard that the alleged Hayer killers were hired by the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group in Kamloops to murder the publisher for $50,000. The Babbar Khalsa has been linked to the Air India bombing.
17/03/08 Kim Bolan/Vancouver Sun/Canada.com, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Mar 2008, Foreign Mar 2008, NACIL Mar 2008, Safety Mar 2008