ForTheRecordVille
Given the fact that it has become an important focal point of discussion, both here, there and everywhere, we have decided that it is important, as a public service, to post up the entire Vancouver Sun story titled 'Liberal MP's in-law interviewed in Air India case' by Kim Bolan before it disappears behind the CanWest subscription wailing wall:
Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A young Liberal MP who delivered Stephane Dion 250 leadership votes is the son-in-law of a man police have interviewed in connection with the Air India bombing case.
Navdeep Singh Bains, MP for Mississauga-Brampton South, shot on to the national stage after the December 2006 convention in which he delivered huge support to Gerard Kennedy and later to Dion, who won the Liberal leadership by 437 votes.
The Vancouver Sun has learned that Bains's father-in-law, Darshan Singh Saini, is on the RCMP's potential list of witnesses at investigative hearings designed to advance the Air India criminal probe.
But the ability to hold those hearings will be lost March 1 if parts of the Anti-Terrorism Act expire as expected, after the Liberals recently withdrew support for extending the provision being used to hold them.
Saini, former Ontario spokesman for the terrorist Babbar Khalsa Panthak, said in an interview that if he is called to the investigative hearing, he will testify.
"If they call me, I will see. I don't know about that," he said. "It is not that I hide anything. If something comes up again, that is that."
And he said his MP son-in-law's political positions have nothing to do with him.
"I can only speak for me. I cannot speak for my son-in-law," Saini said from Toronto.
Saini is listed as an alternative leadership delegate for Kennedy, according to documents obtained by The Sun. But he said he did not attend the convention because of medical issues.
Kennedy said Tuesday he has met Saini, but was unaware of his link to political events in the Sikh community in the 1980s.
"I had not been aware of it. And it certainly never came up within the course of any of the interactions I had," Kennedy said. "I have never had the opportunity to discuss it with him [Saini.]"
Nor has he discussed the issue with Bains, he said.
Saini was a controversial figure in the 1980s. He helped a young man named Harkirat Singh Bagga by giving him a place to stay for several weeks in 1988. Bagga left Saini's Ontario home that summer, travelled to B.C. and critically wounded newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer in the first attempt on Hayer's life. Hayer, who had offered to be a witness in the Air India case, was assassinated a decade later.
Court documents released during the Air India trial say Saini told the RCMP he had met Bagga in Pakistan in November 1987, along with Ajaib Singh Bagri, a Babbar Khalsa leader acquitted in the Air India bombing.
Bagri at one time was charged in the 1988 plot to kill Hayer and Saini was expected to be called as a witness, according to Air India trial documents, but the charge was later stayed.
Hayer's son Dave, who is a Liberal MLA in B.C., said he had no idea that Bains was related to Saini.
"I was really shocked to learn that a member of Parliament is closely related to someone who was living with the person who came to shoot my father," Dave Hayer said.
The RCMP has been preparing since 2003 to hold investigative hearings into the Air India bombing to compel people believed to have knowledge of events at that time to testify before a judge.
Bains, who is just 29, confirmed last week his relationship with Saini. He did not call back Tuesday to answer questions about the implications of Saini's possible involvement in investigative hearings.
He said earlier that he makes all his decisions as an MP based on what is best for Canadians.
He said he had not realized the impact of the change in the Anti-Terrorism Act on the Air India probe.
"It is very concerning," Bains said. "There is a debate that is taking place and it will continue to take place. There is no doubt about that. We will raise it among ourselves."
His family also has connections with the World Sikh Organization, another Sikh separatist group that made an address at the resumption of the Air India inquiry in Ottawa Monday.
Saini said he is no longer involved in the Khalistan movement.
"I am not very much into politics any more," he said. "My views are drastically different now."
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