Another revelation in inquiry over bombed 1985 Air India jet
MONTREAL -- Cost concerns led a 1985 Air India flight to take off from Toronto despite credible information that a terrorist attack was imminent, an inquiry into the two-decade-old bombing heard Wednesday.
The revelation was the latest in a litany of security oversights, unheeded warnings and miscommunication among security officials in the days before Air India Flight 182 was blown from the sky, killing 329 people.
The lapses are a catalogue of missed opportunities: repeated warnings as early as 1984 and up to days before the disaster of an attack by Sikh extremists; absent sniffer dogs at Toronto airport; a malfunctioning x-ray machine; a tardy policeman.
On Wednesday, the special tribunal heard from a baggage screener who testified that he overheard officials saying that keeping the plane on the tarmac was too costly to justify searching baggage already on board, even though three suspicious bags had been found among those being loaded onto the plane.
Read entire article at DPA (German Press Agency)
The revelation was the latest in a litany of security oversights, unheeded warnings and miscommunication among security officials in the days before Air India Flight 182 was blown from the sky, killing 329 people.
The lapses are a catalogue of missed opportunities: repeated warnings as early as 1984 and up to days before the disaster of an attack by Sikh extremists; absent sniffer dogs at Toronto airport; a malfunctioning x-ray machine; a tardy policeman.
On Wednesday, the special tribunal heard from a baggage screener who testified that he overheard officials saying that keeping the plane on the tarmac was too costly to justify searching baggage already on board, even though three suspicious bags had been found among those being loaded onto the plane.