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Ultra-secure Courtroom for Kanishka Trial

A P Kamath

Citing a climate of intimidation of witnesses, officials in British Columbia will spend at least $5.4 million to construct an ultra-secure courtroom in Vancouver for the trial of two men charged with the 1985 Air-India bombing.

The facility will be ready by the end of the year. The trial is expected to start in early February 2002.

Canadian officials have been advised by their counterparts in England who handled the trial of two Libyans accused in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, reports in Vancouver publications said. The trial was held near Amsterdam.

"Air-India is the first case planned to go into [the courtroom], but the room is to be there indefinitely," Ric McCandless, assistant deputy minister in the attorney-general's office, told reporters while defended spending millions for the courtroom.

"We're using Air-India to make the dollars go further to reuse the investment," he told the National Post. "We believe it is a good plan to have a high-security courtroom in central Vancouver."

Officials also expect to charge many more people in the bombings that killed 329 people aboard Kanishka and two bag handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport.

Charged in the explosions -- described as the worst mass murder in Canadian history -- are mill worker and preacher Ajaib Singh Bagri, 51, and millionaire Ripudaman Singh Malik, 53. The two were arrested in November and have been denied bail.

Authorities are sharply concerned about Bagri, who has also been charged with the 1988 attempted murder of Tara Singh Hayer, publisher of the Punjabi-language Indo-Canadian Times weekly.

Hayer, who was paralyzed following the attack, was killed nearly a decade later. No one has been arrested in his murder.

Authorities are also waiting to hear from England on a request to charge Inderjit Singh Reyat, who is approaching the end of his 10-year sentence for manufacturing a bomb that went off at Narita.

Reyat, who had fled to England soon after the 1985 explosion, was brought back from England to face trial in the Narita bombing. British law mandates that he cannot be tried for another crime without specific permission from the Crown.

The fortified courtroom will be built within the Vancouver law courts, The Post reported.

The trial, which will involve dozens of witnesses and officials, could go on for over a year, officials say. It is expected to draw reporters from over half-a-dozen countries.

Ric McCandless told the Post that the BC courtroom will include advanced technology for displaying video evidence and handling the expected mass of evidence in the complex case.

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