Two Sikh militants go on trial for murder on Monday, nearly 18 years after an explosion ripped through Air India Flight 182 and sent 329 people to their deaths. The mid-air bombing off the Irish coast on June 23, 1985, a bloody chapter in a religious war that has since faded from world attention, was the deadliest act of aviation sabotage until Sept. 11, 2001. Prosecutors say Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were part of a group of Vancouver-based Sikh separatists that conspired to attack the Indian government by destroying two Air India jets simultaneously at opposite ends of globe. The group was seeking revenge for the Indian Army’s 1984 storming of Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in the city of AmriCzar. That operation, aimed at ousting militants who had occupied the temple, left hundreds of people dead. One bomb destroyed Flight 182 on its way from Canada to London and then India, killing everyone on the aircraft. The other bomb exploded in luggage being transferred at Tokyo’s airport, killing two workers and injuring four others. Full Story
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