Air India Flight 182: The Transactions leading to Terrorism
Attack profile of the Air India Flight 182
On this day 37 years ago, a suitcase bomb planted by Canada-based Sikh militants on Air India Flight 182 exploded and killed all 329 people aboard. After departure from Toronto, the plane crashed off the coast of Ireland. Decades later, the bombing remains the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. The events of Flight 182 led to changes in Canadian airline policies as well as a broader shift in the nation’s security and intelligence institutions. The financial details of the event, along with the response of the Canadian government, are outlined below.
June 23, 1985, marks one of the deadliest acts of aviation terrorism. 329 people on board Air India Flight 182, most of whom were Canadian, were murdered in a terrorist act. The bombing was part of a larger transnational terrorist conspiracy by Canada-based Sikh militants, primarily members of the Babbar Khalsa International group (BKI). Another bomb connected to the plot was meant to explode aboard Air India Flight 301. However, it mistakenly detonated while being transferred at the Narita Airport in Japan, killing two baggage handlers and injuring four others.
Members of BKI, the International Sikh Youth Federation, and other radical groups within the Sikh community wanted to send a message to the Indian government through the attacks. They demanded the creation of an independent Sikh state, to be called Khalistan, in the Northern province of Punjab in India. Talwinder Singh Parmar founded the first unit of BKI in Canada in 1981. It was members and associates of this unit that planned and conducted the bombing. Devotees of Parmar, including Ripudaman Singh Malik, have “admitted to financing some of Parmar’s ‘religious’ activities and admiring him as a preacher.” While concrete details on how the attack was financed are sparse, it seems as though resources for the bombing came from contributors in the Sikh community and from the personal funds of the plotters.
In the months leading up to the attack, the newly established Canadian Security Intelligence Service was keeping tabs on Parmar. They followed him on a ferry from the mainland of British Columbia to Vancouver Island in early June 1985, where he met a local mechanic, Inderjit Singh Reyat, along with another unnamed individual. Reyat bought two Micronta seven-day timers from Radio Shack, batteries, an FM tuner casing to house the bomb, a VCR, several sticks of dynamite, and a blasting manual in preparation for the attack. The three men tested bomb materials which would later be used on the Air India flight. On June 19th, 1985, one of Parmar’s associates (suspected to be Hardial Singh Johal) then used $3,005 in cash to buy two Canadian Pacific Airlines tickets that connected with Air India flights.
Financial Resources
The plotters had enough capital in advance of the attack to attempt to bribe co-conspirators. One witness involved in the investigative inquiry that followed the event stated “that Sikh separatists in Vancouver had offered him $180,000 to help them get a bomb on an aircraft.” A briefcase full of cash was shown in attempts to entice the individual’s involvement. The money was planned to have been put into a lawyer’s trust fund, if accepted. Overall, BKI and other Sikh-militants raised, stored, and used significant resources to plan and conduct the bombing
Estimates vary on the cost of the attack - one researcher estimated that the operational costs of the Air India bombings were approximately $3,000. However, an exact costing of the event is impossible given the changes in price of equipment and goods over time, and the lack of detail that was included in official documentation. It is important to note that the costs involved in the attack likely exceeded the items outlined in official reports, and likely included other elements such as operational security measures, incidental expenses, and more. As such, the cost of the attacks likely exceeded this estimate (particularly as the airline tickets alone cost more than $3,000).
Adjusted to 2018 US dollars, the attack would have cost the equivalent of at least $7,000 today. This makes it a relatively expensive attack (the median cost of attacks over time is closer to $1,000), and in the lowest 20% in terms of cost per victim.
Government Response
In the decades that followed the attack, Canadian authorities attempted to investigate and hold those involved accountable. Out of three individuals accused of involvement, only one, Inderjit Singh Reyat, was convicted of manslaughter for his role in building the bombs. The attempted prosecutions were deemed to be one of the longest and most expensive trials in Canadian history. A high security courtroom was even built in Vancouver’s downtown, at a cost of more than $7 million, to hold the accused involved in the bombing. In addition, one witness was paid $460,000 to cooperate and testify against one of the defendants in the trial. The failure of Canadian agencies to prevent the attack, alongside issues in the subsequent investigation of the bombing, led to a public inquiry into the events of Air India Flight 182.
In 2010, Canada released a commission of inquiry into the incident which concluded that a “cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service failed to prevent the disaster. Issues with information sharing and the destruction of intelligence plagued the initial investigation. Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major called for a series of changes to the Canadian security and intelligence apparatus – including strengthening the counter-terrorism financing regime. The entire fifth volume of Major’s inquiry was dedicated to terrorist financing. One area of particular interest was enhancing investigation of the charitable sector. BKI was granted charitable status in Canada, and various reports suggest that funds collected to support Sikh temples in Canada may have been diverted to support Sikh militancy.
Lessons Learned
Ultimately, the Air India Flight 182 attack resulted in several lessons learned for the Government of Canada – one of which being the importance of investigating the financial activities of suspected extremists. However, the results of efforts to improve this aspect of investigations (and to prosecute terrorist financiers) have, to date, been very limited. In Canada, there have only been two successful terrorist financing convictions, and as the Cullen Commission illustrated, financial intelligence in Canada is poorly understood.
While the national terrorist financing regime has changed immensely since 1985, we can still learn from this case. All attacks require financing – and connecting those transactions with other information can be crucial for understanding the intent and capabilities of potential attackers. Further, understanding the financing of attacks (operational financing) can help to identify opportunities to disrupt terrorist activity before it occurs – if we are paying attention and dedicating the appropriate investigative resources.