Nearly two decades after Air India Flight 182 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean killing 329 people, the fate of the two Sikh extremists charged with the bombing is finally in hands of a judge.
Arguments closed yesterday in the murder and conspiracy trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, following testimony by 115 witnesses over 19 months in connection with history's deadliest bombing of a civilian airliner.
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Ian Bruce Josephson, who is hearing the case without a jury, said he expects to issue his ruling on Mar. 16, 2005. If convicted, Bagri, 55, and Malik, 57, could receive sentences of life in prison.
"It has been a trek across a vast expanse of facts and law," defense attorney Richard Peck told the court in Vancouver, where the audience included both one of the victims and Bagri's daughters.
Ripudaman and Bagri have denied responsibility for the June 23, 1985, bombing of Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland , and also for an attempt to destroy another Air India aircraft at the same time over the Pacific Ocean, but which instead killed two Tokyo airport workers.
Police allege the bombings were done by a group of Vancouver-based Sikh militants who wanted revenge on the Indian government for the 1984 storming of Sikhism's Golden Temple in Amritsar.
The prosecution's case was based largely on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of two witnesses who say Malik and Bagri independently admitted their involvement in the plot after the bombs exploded.
Bagri, a Kamloops, British Columbia, mill worker, and Malik, a wealthy Vancouver businessman, say there may have been a plot by Sikh militants, but prosecution witnesses who linked them to the attacks lied out of revenge or for financial gain.
A third defendant, Inderjit Singh Reyat, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge last year before the trial started. He was called as a witness, but told the court he knew nothing of the alleged conspiracy.
Pervis Madon, whose husband died in the Flight 182 explosion, and who watched much of the trial, said it would be hard to wait for the verdict but she was confident the men would be convicted.
Defence attorney David Crossin told reporters he was confident the men would be found not guilty because the prosecution's case "fell apart."
The prosecution's case was hampered by mistakes in the investigation, including a decision by Canada's spy agency to erase 1980s wiretaps of the suspects rather than share them with police investigators.
Bagri and Malik were not arrested until 2000. Investigators allege the mastermind of the plot was Talwinder Singh Pamar, a founder of the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa who was killed by Indian police in 1992.