Victims' families felt discriminated, says AI inquiry

OTTAWA: Castigating the Canadian government for its 'inadequate' response to the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people, mostly of Indian origin, an inquiry has said the victims' families felt they were treated as second grade citizens by Ottawa which shortchanged them on compensation.
      
In a 211-page interim report which for the first time officially documents the enormous suffering of the victims' families since the Kanishka airliner crashed off the Irish coast 22 years ago, the inquiry says Canadians in general were slow to grasp the enormity of the tragedy and the government was not equipped to deal with it.
      
"It was obvious that in 1985 Canada did not have a response team that could react to such a massive and unexpected attack," John Major, who heads the government appointed commission, said in the report released after 15 months of oral hearing while the inquiry into the terrorist bombing and subsequent probe continues.
     
"A question that lingers among the families and other Canadians is: 'If Air India Flight 182 had been an Air Canada flight with all fair-skinned Canadians, would the government response have been different?' There is no way to answer that. As a country, we would hope not," Major said. Most of those who died were Canadians of Indian origin.
     
Although it's was not part of his formal mandate to deal with the subject, Major noted that many of the grieving families felt they were later shortchanged in financial compensation by Ottawa and accused the federal officials of not being more forthcoming about how they determined the totals to be handed out to individual claimants.

"Compensation was paid only after prolonged civil litigation," Major wrote. "The compensation varied in amount for reasons not disclosed to the commission."
    
The federal government paid more than USD20 million in out-of-court settlements reached in 1990 with families who had launched civil suits.  Major said his report would be incomplete if he didn't take note of their concerns.
      
Canadian diplomats who tried to help the families were "well meaning and well intended but unprepared and ill-equipped for what was expected of them," Major said.
     
"Their number and resources were inadequate for what was needed to respond to a terrorist attack," Major, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, said.
    
The report recounts the gut-wrenching testimony given over several weeks last year by dozens of victims' families. Major said it was important to have his inquiry open last year with the testimony of relatives of those who died in the terrorist plot.
     
"The families of the victims of the Air India tragedy have already waited much too long for their stories to be told," he said.
     
He said while families have been quoted in the media for years, "what was different this time was that the families were invited by this commission, mandated by the government of Canada to express their feelings in a formal hearing before a government-appointed commissioner.
      
"It is hoped that the process of relating such personal grief will bring some healing to them," it said.
       
There are no recommendations in the report by the Commission appointed in May last year following public outrage over the aquittal of two suspects - Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri - in March 2005 for lack of evidence.