Final Air India draft complete

Vancouver: Decades of waiting for answers in the 1985 Air India bombing may soon be over for families of the 329 people who died on board the flight.
The Ottawa-based Air India Inquiry announced Tuesday it has completed a draft of its final report and should be releasing it shortly.
Inquiry spokesman Michael Tansey said in a news release that the “legal work is finished and the commissioner has reviewed and amended the text, verified the conclusions and recommendations, and approved the final draft.”
But he said there is still a lot of prepublication work to be done before the report is printed and provided to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The five-volume document must be copy edited, translated and submitted for a national security review in both English and French to a variety of government agencies before it can be printed, Tansey said.
That process is expected to take at least two months.
Lawyer Jacques Shore, who represents the Air India Victims’ Families Association, said the completion of the report is “a very significant development for us.”
He said hopefully there will be time for the report to be accepted by Parliament, and its recommendations acted upon, before the 25th anniversary of the bombing next June.
“Our hope is that on the 23rd of June, 2010, we will be looking at something that is complete, concluded and will be closure to the families,” Shore said.
The first volume will be an overview of all the evidence heard during 19 months of public hearings and a few months of additional written submissions between parties.
The other volumes will consist of the pre- and post-bombing phases of the investigation, the problems with information-sharing between the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, witness protection and the difficulties of running terrorism trials. Aviation security issues make up volume four, while the final volume covers terrorism financing.
Relatives of those who died in the bombing of Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, had for years called on the Canadian government to hold a judicial inquiry into how the bombing plot was carried out under the noses of law enforcement agencies.
28/07/09 Kim Bolan/Vancouver Sun/Ottawa Citizen

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Categories: Air India - International Jul 2009, Foreign Jul 2009, NACIL Jul 2009, Safety Jul 2009