By
The Associated Press
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Canadian authorities have arrested a third suspect in the 1985 bombing of an Air India jet, the deadliest-ever bombing of an airplane, officials said.
The suspect, whom authorities did not identify, has not been charged, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Cate Galliford said Sunday. She declined to give further details.
Canadian authorities last week arrested and charged two men with killing 329 people in the 1985 bombing of the jumbo jet near Ireland and two baggage handlers killed by another bomb in Tokyo.
Ripudaman Singh Malik, 53, and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 51, both of Sikh origin, were to make their first court appearance yesterday.
Police also were gathering evidence to arrest at least four more suspects, all of Sikh origin, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported in its yesterday editions.
Air India Flight 182 from Montreal to New Delhi, with a planned stop in London, went down off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 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.
A Sikh man is serving a 10-year sentence in Canada for his involvement in the Tokyo explosion.
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, Scotland, that killed 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground.
