INDERJIT SINGH REYAT PLEADS GUILTY TO MANSLAUGHTER
Monday February 10, 2003
VANCOUVER – Inderjit Singh Reyat, a 51-year-old who holds dual
British and Canadian citizenship, has now accepted he aided and abetted
those responsible for carrying out history’s worst bomb explosion aboard a
civilian plane.
Reyat stood silently in a Vancouver court
and offered a guilty plea to a single count of the manslaughter of 329
people who perished aboard Air India Flight 182 when the jet exploded over
the Atlantic some 200 kilometres off the coast of Ireland on June 23,
1985.
His lawyer, David Gibbons, told court Reyat
was sorrowful about the deaths which occurred as a result of his
procurement of bomb making parts which allowed others to make the
explosive device.
Reyat was sentenced to an additional five
years in prison. He was sentenced to ten years in 1991 after being
convicted of two counts of manslaughter in relation to the bomb explosion
at Tokyo’s Narita Airport on the same day that Air India Flight 182 blew
up.
The bomb explosion in Tokyo killed two
Japanese baggage handlers.
Evidence submitted in the Narita-Tokyo
bombings showed Reyat demonstrated a bush experiment in explosives to
Babbar Khalsa terrorist group leader Talwinder Singh Parmar on June 4,
1985 – just 18 days before the bombings. The Canadian Security
Intelligence Service said at the time that it was following Parmar when
Reyat, Parmar and a third man went to bush areas near Duncan on Vancouver
Island. There, agents heard a loud explosion and later checks by the RCMP
confirmed a small bomb went off in the bush.
It was also proven at that time that Reyat
obtained substantial amounts of dynamite, bought two Radio Shack
electronic timers, batteries and other bomb-making parts during the days
leading up to the twin bombings.
There was also evidence that on the day the
two bag bombs were checked in at Vancouver Airport on June 22, 1985, Reyat
had traveled to Vancouver from his Duncan home. There were multiple
telephone calls between Reyat’s home and the home of Hardial Singh Johal –
a former president of the Vancouver Sikh Temple who was arrested twice
during the Royal Columbian Mounted Police investigation into the bombings.
A telephone number related to Johal had
turned up on ticket bookings for two Singhs who failed to board their
flights out of Vancouver after checking in their bags.
Parmar, the founder of the Babbar Khalsa
terrorist group, was killed during an encounter with Indian police in
October 1992 inside the Punjab.
Johal, an associate of Parmar and Reyat,
recently died of natural causes before he could be brought to justice.
Reyat will have effectively served a life
sentence when he completes the latest five years added on to his sentence
for his role in the Air India bombing. He has been in custody since 1988
when he was picked up in England.
The crown – which continues to
prosecute Sikh preacher Ajaib Singh Bagri and Vancouver millionaire
Ripudaman Singh Malik on charges connected to the Air India bombing – is
now free to call Reyat as a witness in the ongoing court cases
Written by Salim Jiwa
Author of "The Death of Air india Flight 182"
auth@flight182.com
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