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"Canada a terrorist haven after Operation Bluestar''

Toronto: Canada was a haven for terrorists after Operation Blue Star in 1984, a lawyer representing families of the victims of the 1985 Air India bombing told a public inquiry.

``It appeared to me in 1984 and 1985 it was open season for terrorists. It is frightening to think it took five months for Canada's spy agency to get a warrant approved to tap calls of the suspected bombing mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar," Norm Boxall said.

An October 19, 1984 application for the warrant to tap phone calls said Parmar had been calling for the murder of 50,000 Hindus and other acts of violence for months in speeches across Canada. Yet the warrant was not approved till March 1985, three months before the Kanishka bombing that killed all 329 aboard.

The warrant document, marked top secret, called Parmar the most radical and potentially dangerous Sikh in the country.

Bureaucratic delay

Jacques Jodoin, a former official with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the delay was bureaucratic because the CSIS, formed the previous summer, was still grappling with teething problems. The system was such that it was bogged down, he told Justice John Major, inquiry commissioner.

A former intelligence official has apologised to the victims' families but ruled out quitting as Ontario's Lieutenant Governor. — PTI

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