Canadian authorities have arrested a third suspect in the 1985 bombing of an Air-India jet. Police refused to identify the suspect, who has not been charged.
Authorities last week arrested and charged two men with killing 329 people in the 1985 bombing of the jumbo jet off the coast of Ireland and the murder of two baggage-handlers killed by another bomb in Tokyo.
Mr Ripudaman Singh Malik (53) and Mr Ajaib Singh Bagri (51), both of Sikh origin, were charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, conspiring to cause bombs to be put on an aircraft and causing a bomb to be placed on an aircraft. They made their first court appearance in Vancouver yesterday.
Police were also gathering evidence to arrest at least four more suspects, all of Sikh origin.
Air-India Flight 182 from Montreal to New Delhi, with a planned stop in London, went down off the coast of Cork on June 23rd, 1985, killing all 329 people aboard. The same day, a bomb exploded in luggage heading for another Air-India flight in Tokyo, killing the two baggage-handlers.
Canadian investigators have long suspected Sikh militants of planting the bombs in revenge for India's 1984 raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the seat of faith for India's Sikh minority.
British Columbia is home to about half of Canada's 200,000 Sikhs. The Air-India bombing killed more people than the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie that killed 259 people on the aircraft and 11 on the ground.