Kanishka: Police did not follow security protocol

TORONTO: The Canadian Police has admitted before the Air India Inquiry Commission probing the bombing of Kanishka plane in 1985 that it failed to follow the security protocols that required the use of a bomb-sniffer dogs to help screen luggage.

All of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's explosive-sniffer dogs were away on training the day baggage containing a bomb was loaded on to a doomed Air India flight in Toronto, a former police officer said.

RCMP dog handler Gary Carlson, who was stationed in Toronto, testified before the Commission headed by Justice John Major that he and his dog Thor were on an annual refresher course in Vancouver.

The course also brought together all five other bomb-sniffer dog teams that the RCMP had stationed near airports across Canada, he said.

Mounties drug dogs could not be used as backup because they were trained only to sniff out narcotics, he added.

But Carlson said that even in the months before the bombing he and Thor had never been called out to help search Air India luggage.

His testimony on this point contradicts the RCMP's previous statements to an informal inquiry conducted for the government by former Ontario premier Bob Rae.

The Mounties told Rae two years ago that bomb-sniffer dogs were available to check bags being loaded on to the Air India flight 182. The plane was blown up off the coast of Ireland in the early hours of June 23, 1985, killing all 329 aboard.