The Canadian government shot down early calls for an inquiry into the tragic bombing of Air India's Kanishka in 1989, it has been revealed.
The Vancouver Sun quotes Ron Atkey, a prominent lawyer who chaired the Security Intelligence Review Committee, as saying he wanted major concerns arising out of the crash, including the erasure of sensitive tapes, to be investigated at the time.
The government, Atkey told the ongoing inquiry into the crash, was however not keen on the inquiry on the grounds that a criminal case was going on in parallel, and also due to worries over lawsuits filed by the families of victims.
John Major, the commissioner heading the inquiry, heard testimony this week about the destruction by the CSIS of wiretaps of key suspects made both before and after the bombing.
Former Crown prosecutor Jim Jardine is among those who told the commission the tape erasures hampered the criminal case, and violated an agreement to preserve evidence that they felt they had with CSIS.
The Sun reports Atkey as saying the erasures were done in accordance to policy at the time, but added it was not a 'common sense' move in light of the unprecedented terrorist attack and the loss of 331 lives.
He said that CSIS was under-resourced in the early days and struggled to find Punjabi translators who could listen to the 210 tapes. All but 54 of the tapes were erased 30 days after they were first listened to by CSIS personnel, and without verbatim transcripts being made, the commission heard.
"We got the impression at this first meeting that tapes had been erased without being fully translated," Atkey is quoted as telling the commission.
