A Sikh separatist suspected of being a CSIS mole in the Air-India conspiracy had the explosives and airline tickets with him shortly before two bombs were allegedly checked onto flights at the Vancouver airport, an RCMP officer stated in an affidavit.
Canada's spy agency intercepted a telephone call on June 21, 1985, between Surjan Singh Gill and the alleged mastermind of the scheme, Talwinder Singh Parmar, Constable Gary Clark-Marlow said in an affidavit sworn to obtain court approval for wiretaps.
Mr. Parmar and Mr. Gill spoke in code, stated Constable Clark-Marlow, a member of the Air-India task force. The affidavit was among documents from the Air-India trial released last week after a publication ban was lifted.
"Mr. Parmar asked Mr. Gill whether he had delivered those papers. Mr. Gill replied: Yes. Mr. Parmar then told him to deliver the clothes to the same place," the officer stated. "I believe that the 'papers' refers to the airline tickets and 'clothes' refers to the suitcase for the bombs."
The revelation raises questions about the Air-India investigation and Mr. Gill's move to England in 2000, shortly before two other men were charged in the case.
Before he left Canada, the RCMP had identified Mr. Gill as one of six main suspects in the Air-India case, recently released RCMP documents show.
Mr. Gill was never charged in the bombings.
Efforts to track down Mr. Gill yesterday proved fruitless.
"He's still in England," said a man who answered Mr. Gill's cellphone and claimed to be his brother Gurnam, a London bus driver. "He's here, but he's in Coventry today."
Told that Mr. Gill was suspected of being a spy for Canada's intelligence service, the respondent burst out laughing.
"It's still going on," he said, promising to get his brother to call back. Later calls to the same phone went unanswered.
Mr. Gill lived until recently at his brother's home in a London suburb near Heathrow airport and adjacent to Southall, the centre of London's Punjabi population.
A visitor to Gurnam's modest semi-detached house, across the street from a rail line, at first found nobody home. A neighbour, Mohamed Aleem, confirmed that Surjan Singh Gill had been living with his brother, but had moved out some time ago.
RCMP Staff Sergeant Grant Learned said in an interview that he could not respond to questions about the affidavit, which was sworn some time after April 1996. The date of the affidavit is included in information still subject to publication ban.
The recently released police documents from the Air-India trial tell only part of the story, he said.
"There's still hundreds of thousands of pages and tapes and interviews that the media do not have access to," he said. "Everyone has questions about bits and pieces of information. . . . I expect the same questions will be raised during the trial."
Constable Clark-Marlow's comments in the affidavit provide an extensive account of dozens of Mr. Parmar's telephone conversations monitored by CSIS starting in late March, 1985.
Mr. Gill was in frequent contact with Mr. Parmar in the days leading up to June 23, 1985. Although tape recordings of most conversations were erased, the spy agency had officers' notes and various reports to piece together a portrait of Mr. Gill's activities.
A CSIS agent, Larry Lowe, followed Mr. Gill, Mr. Parmar and an unidentified man to the Vancouver ferry terminal on the afternoon of June 4, 1985, when Mr. Parmar and the other man went to Vancouver Island, allegedly to test explosives, the RCMP officer stated.
CSIS surveillance personnel saw Mr. Gill pick up Mr. Parmar at the ferry terminal at 11:35 p.m. on the same day.
CSIS surveillance personnel also saw Mr. Gill arrive at Mr. Parmar's house at 8:15 a.m., June 21, 1985, the same day they had spoken on the phone about delivering paper and clothes.
Mr. Gill handed Mr. Parmar a manila envelope and talked with him for about 30 minutes. Police subsequently found a note dated June 21, 1985, that said Mr. Gill was resigning from a Sikh separatist group run by Mr. Parmar.
"It is my belief that Gill's purpose in this visit was to deliver his resignation," Constable Clark-Marlow stated.
Despite his resignation, Mr. Gill was seen talking to Mr. Parmar later the same day. Mr. Gill also went over to Mr. Parmar's house on the evening of June, 23, 1985, after the bombs had exploded, Constable Clark-Marlow wrote.
Another police officer, Staff Sergeant Don Adam, suggested during the interrogation of one of the Air-India defendants that Mr. Gill was a CSIS agent who was instructed to pull out before the disaster. Solicitor-General Wayne Easter has denied that CSIS knew in advance about the bombing.
Vancouver businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik and Kamloops millworker Ajaib Singh Bagri face murder charges in the death of 329 people killed in a midair explosion aboard an Air-India flight on June 23, 1985. They are also charged with the murder of two people who died in an explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport.
The prosecution has charged that the explosions were caused by bombs in suitcases checked onto flights at the Vancouver airport. One of the bombs went to Tokyo where it exploded at the Narita airport before it could be transferred to an Air-India flight and the other was on a flight to Toronto where it was transferred to another Air-India flight and exploded off the coast of Ireland.
