Air India bombing final report

June 17, 2010 7:37 PM

The final report of the bombing of Air India flight 182 from Canada in 1985 has been released. Turns out the Mounties, and others, are to blame.
posted by anothermug (21 comments total)

Warning: some of the comments in the linked article are stunningly callous and xenophobic. And I thought Canadians were always nice to each other!
posted by miyabo at 7:59 PM on June 17, 2010

1) The chacterization of who is to blame in the FPP is seriously simplistic. Firstly, the bombers were to blame. Secondly, singling out the RCMP ignores the actions of other agencies like CSIS, who erased tapes of the bombers conducting a dry run for the bombing, rather than sharing them with the RCMP.
2) miyabo - I'm afraid you can find crazies in the comments section everywhere!
posted by dry white toast at 8:13 PM on June 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

Don't read the comments on CBC, ever. Unless you need fuel for your anger-box.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:14 PM on June 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

Ha. Oddly enough, I frequently read the CBC's comments and this time I was shocked by how insensitive many of them were.

Also: I don't think I've read a single good thing about CSIS ever.
posted by stinkycheese at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2010

Agreed - the CBC comments feature should be removed. They're ruining my perception of my fellow Canadians.
posted by jimmythefish at 8:33 PM on June 17, 2010

Also: I don't think I've read a single good thing about CSIS ever.

CSIS was created because Department D of the RCMP was disbanded after yet another scandal displaying incompetence and idiocy. When you disband one spy agency, who do you think makes up 90% of the applicants for the next?
posted by fatbird at 8:54 PM on June 17, 2010

Turns out the Mounties, and others, are to blame.

Did the Mounties bomb the plane?
posted by falameufilho at 9:06 PM on June 17, 2010

And I thought Canadians were always nice to each other!

Yeah, well .. we don't really like to insult one another unless its publicly funded, so that we can absorb the shame and guilt collectively.
posted by mannequito at 9:08 PM on June 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

A little context:

June 5, 1984 - The Indian Army storms Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar, 446 km (227 miles) north of New Delhi. [...] Hundreds of people are killed.

Oct. 31, 1984 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who ordered Operation Bluestar, is assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards. Her murder triggers riots in which more than 2,000 Sikhs are killed in Delhi alone.

June 23, 1985 - Air India Flight 182 explodes in mid-air off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people on board. A bomb also explodes at Tokyo's Narita Airport, killing two workers who were transferring luggage to an Air India flight. Investigators link the attacks to Sikh militants in Western Canada. [...]

posted by pracowity at 10:17 PM on June 17, 2010

I would prefer that Canadians leave their Old World baggage back where they came from, if they are genuinely interested in joining our team. Canadian citizenship for purposes of having a safe base from which to conduct a terror campaign against India - not a really good reason to come.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:48 AM on June 18, 2010

Not helpful, Meatbomb.

Warning: some of the comments in the linked article are stunningly callous and xenophobic. And I thought Canadians were always nice to each other!

Unfortunately there's a weedy patch or two in the Canadian right-wing's grass-roots who seem to be trying to outdo the nuttier members of the US right for willful ignorance. Unfortunately, like the GOP, Canada's Conservative Party needs the support of the nutters, so they are tolerated, even nurtured. This portal was set up by a conservative strategist.

Agreed - the CBC comments feature should be removed. They're ruining my perception of my fellow Canadians.

... see? we'd rather look away than face up to this.

On the Air India thing... we Canadians are sometimes noted for a certain cautiousness, consideration, thoughtfulness, reserve, that gets characterized as being 'nice', or 'prudent' for example having the sort of banking system that was relatively unscathed by the recent economic crises. The ugly dark side of this characteristic is that we are often very bureaucratic, reticent, and petty when it comes to taking quick decisive action. The nature and extent of the infighting between CSIS and the RCMP is an example of this. They didn't prevent the bombings, they couldn't successfully prosecute most of the suspects, and it took 24 years to get to this.

Of course the post 9/11 airport security 'upgrades' have vastly overshadowed the few paltry improvements made after the Air India incidents, but compared to passenger scrutiny, it's still easy to get around security arrangements in the baggage-handling area, and the low-paid handlers aren't screened very thoroughly.
posted by Artful Codger at 5:42 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Canadian citizenship for purposes of having a safe base from which to conduct a terror campaign against India - not a really good reason to come.

No shit. Thanks for the insight.

"We were not allowed to meet any government minister for almost 10 years," he said. "The first time we met with the government was in 1995.… We were treated like troublemakers."

This case is such a gigantic fuck up. The two bombers didn't end up in jail. It took a million years to even prosecute. It seems like the country barely gave a fuck that all these Canadians died.

CBC's Air India sub-site is a good source of information about the whole story.
posted by chunking express at 7:08 AM on June 18, 2010

The chacterization of who is to blame in the FPP is seriously simplistic
correct. anothermug wrote a seriously misleading and lurid title. flagged for deletion.
posted by krautland at 7:32 AM on June 18, 2010

flagged for deletion
Well, I never would have clicked on the article, and learned about the bombing, if not for the seriously simplistic headline. It's pretty clear the mounties were not behind the bombing--after that, saying the mounties "and others" were to blame, according to the report, is basically correct, no?
posted by _Silky_ at 11:04 AM on June 18, 2010

No, it is in no way correct to say the Mounties are to blame for the bombing of the Air India flight. Are you to blame for me breaking a glass I dropped this morning?
posted by GuyZero at 11:50 AM on June 18, 2010

If negligence on the part of the RCMP meant the difference between preventing this and allowing it to happen, then yes, they are to blame.
posted by rocket88 at 12:22 PM on June 18, 2010

Really, rocket88? What did you do to stop the bombing? It seems by that logic you're also implicated.
posted by GuyZero at 2:04 PM on June 18, 2010

GuyZero, "negligence" implies more than not stopping it. It implies that there was some reasonable action they kew about and could have taken and didn't.
posted by fatbird at 2:14 PM on June 18, 2010

Being negligent or even criminally negligent is vastly different than saying someone is to blame. I'm not trying to exculpate the RCMP here just trying to be clear about the OP's wording being sloppy at best.
posted by GuyZero at 2:33 PM on June 18, 2010

GuyZero: "Being negligent or even criminally negligent is vastly different than saying someone is to blame. I'm not trying to exculpate the RCMP here just trying to be clear about the OP's wording being sloppy at best."

CBC.ca News - Air India Flight 182 Canadian authorities should have known that Air India Flight 182 was a potential terrorist target, a long-awaited report says in blaming a "cascading series of errors" by government, the RCMP and CSIS for failing to prevent the disaster.

Note: "blaming." A little more proximate than your dropped glass analogy.
posted by psyche7 at 4:00 PM on June 19, 2010

And maybe someday America will get past "looking forwards, not backwards" and arrive at a similar conclusion for "Bin Laden determined to act within the US." And, you know, blame the appropriate parties.
posted by psyche7 at 5:44 PM on June 19, 2010