[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 10] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 13772-13773] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]COUNCIL OF KHALISTAN WRITES TO CANADIAN JUSTICE MINISTER ABOUT AIR INDIA INVESTIGATION ______ HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS of new york in the house of representatives Wednesday, May 23, 2007 Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, as you mow, the government of Canada has undertaken another investigation into the 1985 Air India bombing. Recently, the Council of Khalistan wrote to the Canadian Justice Minister about that investigation. The letter states that ``the Indian government continues to try to blame Sikhs for this atrocity, despite the fact that Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted by a Canadian judge, who said that the witnesses against them were not credible.'' In the letter, Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of Khalistan, notes that the Canadian Security Investigation Service (CSIS) said at the time, ``if you really want to clear the incidents quickly, take vans down to the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, load up everybody and take them down for questioning. We know it and they know it that they were involved.'' The Indian Consul General in Toronto, Mr. Surinder Malik, pulled his wife and daughter off the flight at the last minute. A friend of his who was a car dealer also cancelled his reservation suddenly. Mr. Malik called in a lot of information about the case before the incident was even public knowledge, including a tip to look for an ``L. Singh'' on the passenger manifest. ``L. Singh'' was the name under which one of the bombers held his tickets. The other was ``M. Singh.'' Later, a man named Lal Singh told the press that he was offered ``two million dollars and settlement in a nice country'' to give false testimony in the case--an offer that Mr. Singh declined. It seems that, as Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew, the Canadian journalists who wrote the definitive book on the case, Soft Target, noted, ``[Consul General] Malik knew more details about the two blasts than did the police investigators.'' How did this Indian government official know so much so soon? He also admitted that he fed information to the Toronto Globe and Mail to make a stronger case to blame the Sikhs for the bombing. This was part of a coordinated Indian government effort to paint the Sikh community as terrorists. It is also worth noting that the Sikh group on whom India has placed the blame all these years is a group called Babbar Khalsa. It is heavily infiltrated by the Indian government. So by trying to blame Babbar Khalsa, the government is essentially taking the blame itself. I recommend to all my colleagues that they read this informative letter. This is just further proof, if any is needed, that India is a regime that will carry out acts of terror to promote its own political objectives. Remember that India has killed more than a quarter of a million Sikhs, according to the Punjab State Magistracy, and hold over 52,000 of them as political prisoners, according to the Movement Against State Repression. As I have asked before, why does a democracy need a Movement Against State Repression anyway? Amnesty International reports that tens of thousands of other minorities are held as political prisoners in India, and it has killed over 90,000 Kashmiri Muslims, over 300,000 Christians in Nagaland, and tens of thousands of other minorities as well. Why should the American people and government support such a government, especially at a time when we are putting our young people on the front lines to fight against terrorism? The time has come to cut off our aid to Indian, end our trade with them, and put Congress on record in support of the freedom movements there. This is the way to peace, freedom, prosperity, and stability in South Asia, Madam Speaker. Council of Khalistan, Washington, DC, May 16, 2007. Hon. Robert Douglas Nicholson, Justice Minister of Canada, House of Commons, Ottawa, Canada. Dear Minister Nicholson: I am writing in regard to your new inquiry into the Air India Flight 182 bombing of 1985. I see no purpose for this ongoing inquiry. As you know, the Indian government continues to try to blame Sikhs for this atrocity, despite the fact that Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted by a Canadian judge, who said that the witnesses against them were ``not credible.'' Shortly after the bombing occurred, two Canadian journalists, Zuhair Kashmeri of the Toronto Globe and Mail and Brian McAndrew of the Toronto Star, wrote an excellent book on the case entitled Soft Target, which proves that the Indian government itself carried out the bombing. This finding is confirmed in a book by former Member of Parliament David Kilgour entitled Betrayal: The Spy Canada Abandoned. I urge you to call Mr. Kashmeri and Mr. Mcandrew as witnesses in the inquiry. Soft Target shows how the Indian regime bombed its own airliner in 1985, killing 329 innocent people, to justify further repression against the Sikhs. The book quotes an investigator from the Canadian Security Investigation Service as saying, ``If you really want to clear the incidents quickly, take vans down to the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, load up everybody and take them down for questioning. We know it and they know it that they are involved.'' Among many other things, they note that the Indian Consul General in Toronto, Mr. Surinder Malik (no relation to Ripudaman Singh Malik), called in a detailed description of the disaster just hours later when it took the Canadian investigators weeks to find that information. He told them that they should check the passenger manifest for an ``L. Singh'' because he was responsible--before there was any public knowledge of the bombing! According to Wikipedia, on June 20, 1985, two days before the flight, ``at 1910 GMT, a man paid for the two tickets with $3,005 in cash at a CP ticket office in Vancouver. The names on the reservations were changed; `Jaswand Singh' became `M. Singh' and `Mohinderbel Singh' became `L. Singh.'''. Note that this is the same name that Consul General Malik told investigators to look for--``L. Singh.'' It would later come out in newspaper reports that a Sikh named Lal Singh told the press that he was offered ``two m111ion dollars and settlement in a nice country'' by the Indian regime to give false testimony in the case. Consul General Malik had also pulled his wife and daughter off the flight suddenly at the last minute, on the feeble excuse that the daughter had a paper for school. A friend of Consul General Malik's who was a Car dealer also cancelled at the last minute. According to Kashmeri and McAndrew, ``Curiously, [Consul General] Malik knew more details about the two blasts than did the police investigators. . . . Malik said that while one of the suspects was booked to Japan, the other was booked to Toronto and onwards to Bombay. He also said that the two checked their bomb-laden bags but did not board the flight themselves. In sum, Malik had painted a scenario of the double sabotage operation that was a near perfect account of what the Mounties would take weeks to fathom. [Consul General] Malik continually fed the Globe information pointing to Sikh terrorists as the source of the bombs. He was behind another story six days after the crash, this one headlined `Air-India pilot reported given parcel by Sikh.'.'' Kashmeri and McAndrew also wrote, ``Malik pressured the Globe to publish this story, adding that it could be used to make a stronger case for blaming the Air-India and Narita bombings on the Babbar Khalsa leader. Malik also decried the Canadian system of justice for failing to come up with a quick solution to the bombings. `In India we would have had a confession by now. You people have too many civil and human- rights laws,' he complained.'' The Sikh organization that the Indian government said was responsible, Babbar Kahlsa, is and was then heavily infiltrated by Indian government operatives at very high levels of the organization. The main backer of the group had received a $2 million loan from the State Bank of India just before the plane was attacked, according to Soft Target. The year after the bombing, three Indian consuls general were asked to leave the country. In his book, Kilgour wrote that Canadian-Polish double agent Ryszard Paszkowski was approached to join a plot to carry out a second bombing. The people who approached Paszkowski were connected to the Indian government. Yet the Indian government continues to apply pressure to find some Sikhs guilty of the bombing. I am sure that your inquiry will be conducted with fairness and justice. I hope that you will find the real culprits and put this matter to rest. The bombing was an Indian government operation from the beginning. If there is anything I can do to assist you, please feel free to contact me. Sincerely, Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President, Council of Khalistan. [[Page 13773]] ____________________