Page 36 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Air India Flight 182 Bombing———9

commercial airline flight away from any place else in the establishment of an independent Sikh nation. In
the world, so timely detection and notification are 1984, the Indian government launched a military
essential. attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs’
Although an agroterror attack might not cause holiest shrine, which was then occupied by militant
severe food shortages in highly developed countries Sikhs. The attack was deeply offensive to Sikhs and
with diversified food supplies, a terrorist-instigated out- led to further violence, with the Air India bombings
break of a virulent agricultural disease in a less devel- believed to be in retaliation for the attack on the
oped region could cause local famine. Refugees could Golden Temple.
carry the disease beyond borders and across oceans The bombs most likely originated in Vancouver,
where it could disrupt economies, cause food price British Columbia, where an unidentified man booked
increases, and even cause widespread panic if the two different itineraries from Vancouver to New Delhi,
disease were transmissible to humans. India’s capital. One travel itinerary went east, from
Vancouver to Toronto to London to New Delhi; the
See also ANTHRAX; BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM;
second went west, from Vancouver to New Delhi via
COUNTERTERRORISM
Tokyo. In both cases, bags were checked through to
New Delhi, but whoever checked the bags never
Further Reading
boarded the flights.
Alibek, Ken, with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Early in the morning on June 23, 1985, a bag taken
Chilling Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons off the Vancouver-to-Tokyo flight exploded at Tokyo’s
Program in the History of the World.New York. Narita Airport. The explosion killed two baggage
Random House, 1999. handlers and wounded four more. An hour later, Flight
Cameron, Gavin, Jason Pate, and Katherine M. Vogel. 182, traveling from Toronto to London at an altitude of
“Planting Fear: How Real Is the Threat of Agricultural 31,000 feet, disappeared from the radar of flight con-
Terrorism?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 57, trollers. Examination of the wreckage revealed that
No. 5, September/October 2001.
Chalk, Peter. “The U.S. Agricultural Sector: A New Target a sudden explosion, most likely a bomb, destroyed
for Terrorism?” Jane’s Intelligence Review (London), the plane.
February 9, 2001. Talwinder Singh Paramar, a leader of Babbar
Monterey Institute of International Studies. http://cns. Khalsa Society living in British Columbia, had been
miis.edu. under surveillance for weeks before the bombings
Roger, Paul, Simon Whitby, and Malcolm Dando. “Bio- because he was thought to pose a security threat fol-
logical Warfare Against Crops.” Scientific American, lowing the attack on the Golden Temple. Paramar’s
Vol. 280, June 1999. behavior during the surveillance indicated that he
might have been responsible, and he was arrested.
Canadian police had mishandled his surveillance—
AIR INDIA FLIGHT 182 BOMBING no one was watching him on the day the bombs were
delivered to the Vancouver airport, for example—
and key evidence was lost. Charges against Paramar
On June 23, 1985, a bomb exploded in a cargo were dropped, and he eventually returned to India,
hold of Air India Flight 182, which was flying over where he was killed by Indian security forces in
the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland at the time. A handful 1992. An accomplice of Paramar, Inderjet Singh
of the 329 passengers survived the explosion—only to Reyat, a mechanic who apparently built the bombs,
drown in the ocean. Members of the Babbar Khalsa was also arrested and released; he was rearrested,
Society, a Sikh extremist group, are implicated in convicted, and sentenced in 1991 to 10 years in
this attack. prison on manslaughter charges connected to the
Sikhs are a religious minority who have lived in Narita bombing.
northern India since the 1500s. The vast majority of Most of those who died in the bombing of Flight
Sikhs live in the Indian state of Punjab, but signifi- 182 were Canadian citizens of Indian descent, includ-
cant Sikh populations are established in Canada, ing Sikhs; the failure of the Canadian government
the United States, and Great Britain. In the mid- to apprehend and convict those responsible for
1970s, a radical Sikh movement emerged advocating their deaths was seen by many as an insult to the