Terrorism plots are not common in B.C., but there have been a few significant events in the past few decades involving terrorist activities. Both here and abroad.
Here’s a look at a few of them.
Air India flight 182
On June 23, 1985, Air India flight 182 was blown up by a bomb over the Atlantic Ocean. A total of 329 people were killed, including 268 Canadian citizens. It was the first bombing of a 747 jumbo jet.
The suspects in the terrorism plot lived in B.C.
Malkiat Singh Sidhu
Sidhu was the former planner minister of Punjab, India.
He was in Canada to attend his nephew’s wedding and was driving with other people on a gravel road on Vancouver Island. A car stopped in front of theirs and some people got out and started attacking Sidhu’s car with hammers and shooting into the car. Sidhu was hit in the arm and the chest, but pretended to be dead and the men ran away. A judge in the sentencing case for the shooting called this ‘an act of terrorism’.
Sidhu was later killed in 1991 at his home in India.
Gas pipeline bombing
In what is called case of ‘environmental terrorism’, a natural gas pipeline was bombed near Pouce Coupe in northern B.C. in July 2009.
This was the second time in four days, and the sixth time in nine months.
The bombing caused a leak at the EnCana pipeline.
Millennium Plot
Ahmed Ressam was born in Algeria in 1967. He travelled to Montreal in 1994, but in 1995 missed a hearing for an application for his political asylum, and a warrant for his arrest was issued.
However, he was never deported, and developed a new identity for himself.
In 1996, he was linked to the GIA, or Armed Islamic Group, a violent terrorist organization based in Algeria.
In 1998 he went to Afghanistan for terrorist training, and that is when he says he started to plot attacks on the United States.
He returned to Montreal in 1999, and in November of that year he flew to Vancouver to gather more materials.
On December 14, he took a ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington, with more than 100 pounds of explosives. It was there he was caught and arrested.
He was first given 22 years in jail, which was later revised to 37 years in jail.
Comments