Airlines Deals

A Vancouver businessman acquitted of bombing Air-India Flight 182 has been granted intervenor status at the upcoming commission of inquiry, but he will not receive public funding to attend.

Ripudaman Singh Malik had sought full standing, which would make him a full party to all proceedings and enable him to apply for taxpayers’ assistance.

But the inquiry commissioner, retired Supreme Court of Canada judge John Major, limited Mr. Malik’s involvement to responding to evidence that directly and adversely affects his reputation. Mr. Malik may also ask for permission to make a 10-minute opening statement when the hearings begin in September.

The families of the crash victims, the Air-India Cabin Crew Association, Air-India and the Canadian government will be the only full participants, according to a decision posted on the commission website yesterday. They can apply for government funding.

Mr. Major requested that two groups representing families of the crash victims and three individuals work together in the hearings.

In addition to Mr. Malik, intervenor status was granted to civil-liberties groups, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh groups, and groups representing victims of crime and terror. In total, 16 of the 19 applicants were granted full or partial standing.

Mr. Major will examine a range of issues, including investigative turf wars between the RCMP and CSIS, airline security, better protection of witnesses in terrorist cases, and the possibility of holding high-profile trials before a three-judge panel rather than a single jurist.

Mr. Major is required, under the inquiry’s terms of reference, to hear some evidence in private if it endangers national security as defined by the federal government.

Testimony is to begin in September and run through next April. A report is due in September, 2007.

Air-India Flight 182 originated in Toronto and stopped in Montreal en route to London and New Delhi, but crashed off the coast of Ireland on the morning of June 23, 1985, killing all 307 passengers and 22 crew on board. The crash has been blamed on a bomb allegedly planted by Sikh terrorists. Two baggage handlers in Narita, Japan, were killed about an hour earlier by a bomb believed to be linked.

The public outcry after the acquittal of Mr. Malik and his co-accused, Ajaib Singh Bagri, helped drive formation of the inquiry.