A Canadian judge cleared two Sikh militants today of involvement in the 1985 downing of an Air India flight off the coast of Co Cork.
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Bruce Ian Josephson found Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of murder and conspiracy charges in the bombing and a related explosion at a Japanese airport.
Members of the victims' families wept in the Vancouver courtroom as the judge read the verdicts following a 19-month trial. Mr Malik (58) and Mr Bagri (55) smiled at family members.
The mid- air explosion killed all 329 people on board Air India flight 182, the highest death toll from a bombing in civilian aviation history.
The Japan bombing exploded in luggage at happened at Tokyo's Narita airport and killed two workers.
Judge Josephson, who heard 115 witnesses during one of the most complicated and costly cases in Canadian history, called the bombing "fanaticism at its basest and most inhumane level."
But he said he could not believe key prosecution witnesses who testified that Mr Bagri and Mr Malik admitted their roles in the plot, and ruled that justice would not be served if there was any doubt of the defendants' guilt.
More than 70 relatives of the bombing victims came from around the world to hear the verdict, delivered in a specially built high-security court.
Relatives and supporters of Mr Malik, a wealthy Vancouver businessman, and Mr Bagri, a sawmill worker and Sikh priest living in British Columbia, were also in attendance.
"I cannot believe the verdict. All those witnesses would not have come forward and risked their lives. All those poor families. Not in a million years did I think this could happen," said Jeanne Bakermans, a former Canadian Pacific Airlines ticket agent and a witness in the case.
Prosecutors accused the two men of wanting revenge for the Indian Army's 1984 storming of Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar.