Angry relatives and leaders of South Asian communities on Friday said the shocking new testimony at the Air India inquiry had proved that the 1985 bombing could have been prevented and accused Canada of having a different standard of justice for immigrants.
'They have been hiding so many things, and now everything is coming out,' said Premila Sahu, who lost her husband and their two teenage children in the June 23, 1985 Air India disaster, which killed all 329 on board.
'It has been such a waste of time and money to get this far,' Sahu, who lives in Dollard des Ormeaux, was quoted as saying by the Canadian press.
'But the truth is finally coming out finally. There is still more behind all this, we will see,' said Sahu, who was very upset that the plane was not searched or, at the very least, ordered to return to Mirabel airport after it took off.
'If the plane had left, why did not they call it back to the airport,' she asked, adding, 'It just makes us sadder, sicker, to know nothing was done. Our family is gone. It makes me mad.'
Relatives are particularly upset about the fact that the flight was allowed to leave Canada before a bomb-sniffing police dog could search the plane or its luggage, according to surprise testimony by Serge Carignan, a former dog handler with Quebec's provincial police, at the inquiry Wednesday in Ottawa.
In his testimony, Carignan, who was never interviewed by investigators, disputed Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Transport Canada documents that said the plane and luggage had been searched at Mirabel before takeoff.
In fact, Carignan said, the plane had already taken off when he arrived that evening, and the only luggage he and his sniffer dog, Arko, examined were three pieces that had been left behind. That search turned up nothing.
"I have always wondered why, if I was called to search an airplane and luggage, why they let the airplane go before I arrived," Carignan testified, adding, "I believe that we would have found the explosives."
President of the India-Canada Organization, which represents part of Montreal's 60,000-member South Asian communities, said the inquiry underlines one fact -- that Canada has a different standard of justice for immigrants from countries like theirs.
'We are treated like second-class citizens,' Surinder Kumar told The Gazette.
'The authorities had the knowledge, even many months before, about what was going to happen, but they chose to ignore, ignore and ignore again the evidence,' he said.
'I have been following the inquiry every day, and every day I have been shocked, shocked and shocked by new revelations,' Kumar added.
At Radio Humsafar, a private speciality station that broadcasts in four languages from LaSalle, company president Jasvir Sandhu said listeners have had mixed reactions to the new testimony, reported on its hourly newscasts to paying subscribers.
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