Canadian authorities said more arrests were possible after charging two Sikh men in the 1985 Air India bombing that killed all 329 people aboard.
The two men -- Ripudaman Singh Malik, 53, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 51 -- were arrested Friday and charged on eight counts including first-degree murder in the June 23, 1985 Air India explosion as well as a blast the same day at a Tokyo airport that killed two people.
Malik and Bagri remained in custody and were to appear in a Vancouver provincial court on Monday, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Sergeant John Ward said here Saturday. Police would not say where they were being held.
"We are continuing our investigation," Ward said, refusing to comment on the number of other possible suspects.
However, RCMP spokeswoman Cate Galliford said Friday after announcing the two men's arrests: "We're anticipating further arrests."
Air India Flight 182 left Toronto on June 23, 1985, stopped in Montreal and was en route to New Delhi and Bombay when it exploded off the coast of Ireland during its descent to London's Heathrow airport.
"Although arrests have been made, this does not mark the conclusion of the police investigation," the RCMP said in a statement.
Bev Busson, commanding officer of RCMP's "E" division and part of the Air India Task Force, added that "there is no set standard as to how long an investigation of this magnitude should take ... This has been a worldwide investigation with extremely challenging logistical problems."
Canadian police had determined that the Air India Boeing 747 was brought down by a bomb that had been checked onto a Canadian Pacific airline flight at the Vancouver airport. The bag with the bomb was then transferred to the doomed Flight 182 in Toronto.
In Bombay, an Indian official from the ministry of civil aviation, Sanat Kaul, welcomed the news of the arrests, saying "we are happy that the 15-year-long investigation has borne fruit."
The 1985 explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport, which killed two baggage handlers, occurred before luggage from another Vancouver Canadian Pacific flight could be transferred to Air India flight 301 destined for Bangkok.
Police had already established a link between the two incidents.
"Both bombs originated or were placed on the respective flights originating from Vancouver, British Columbia, as the result of a conspiracy," Busson said.
The RCMP named two others as unindicted co-conspirators, Talwinder Singh Parmar and Inderjit Singh Reyat in both bombing incidents. Reyat is serving a 10-year sentence in Canada, imposed in 1991, for manufacturing the bomb intended to blow up Air India's Tokyo-Bangkok flight.
Ward would not comment on whether Reyat was now cooperating with prosecutors.
Parmar, a Sikh extremist leader who lived in Vancouver before he was killed by Indian anti-terrorist forces in 1992, according to police, was related by marriage to Bagri.
Police suspicions have long rested on radical elements of Vancouver's Sikh community. Some Sikhs want to set up an independent state in the Indian Punjab.
Malik, a wealthy Vancouver business man, is linked to a Sikh fundamentalist group.
The presumed terrorists were believed to have been seeking revenge for the deaths of more than 1,000 Sikhs at the hands of Indian troops in the June 1984 Amritsar Golden Temple massacre -- VANCOUVER (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
