Crown tells B.C. Appeal Court acquitted in Air India case should repay legal fees

Vancouver: A man acquitted in the 1985 terrorist bombing of Air India says he has assets worth $20 million - but he believes he shouldn't have to pay back millions of dollars in legal fees he owes the government.
Ripudaman Singh Malik has said he doesn't have any money to repay the $7.5 million he received to cover his legal costs for the massive Air India trial.
The trial ended in March 2005 with not-guilty verdicts for Malik and his co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri.
Bruce McLeod, Malik's lawyer, told B.C. Appeal Court on Friday that his client has millions in assets from two properties, including a business in Vancouver and a hotel in Harrison Hot Springs, B.C.
The government froze Malik's assets in an attempt to get the money and Malik is appealing that decision.
Malik's lawyers missed a deadline for filing documents in the appeal but the judge said Friday the appeal can continue. The court is scheduled to hear the case for three days in March.
Crown lawyer Frank Potts said the fresh evidence McLeod will introduce at that hearing "is doomed to fail" because it wasn't brought up earlier.
Potts told the court that Malik says he's a millionaire when it suits him, and that he isn't when it doesn't.
He also called the assessed value of the two properties belonging to Malik and his wife "opinion evidence" that wouldn't hold up in court.
Meanwhile, Malik is suing the B.C. and federal governments for malicious prosecution, saying the charges stemming from the Air India case smeared his reputation and caused him financial loss.
Malik and his co-accused were charged in the mass murders of 331 people in two separate bombings on June 23, 1985, in what was the deadliest case of aviation terrorism before the 9-11 attacks in the United States.
Most of those killed were Canadian citizens who transferred to an Air India flight in Toronto after boarding a plane in Vancouver, where the Crown contends the bomb-laden suitcases originated.
The government paid Malik's legal bills for his 11-member defence team under an agreement that required him to repay the money after his trial, but Malik then said he couldn't afford to pay the debt.
23/02/09 Link, Canada

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