AWAITING ANSWERS
It Has Been 20 Years Since Tara Singh Hayer Was Murdered After Reporting About Terrorism Through His Newspaper, The Indo Canadian Times. His Death Remains Unsolved. Pictured Is Dave Hayer, Tara Hayer’s Son, In Front Of His Dad’s Portrait.
Twenty years after the slaying of Surrey journalist Tara Singh Hayer, his family’s most vivid memory is of his blood covering their garage floor.
“I ended up having to go back to the garage to clean up this massive pool of blood which was left from where dad was shot,” his daughterin-law Isabelle recalled this week.
Daughter Rupinder also said she couldn’t erase the devastating scene from her mind: “Even afterwards, that image of where the blood was, you still see that.”
More frustrating than their haunting memories is the fact that no one has been charged in the unprecedented execution of a Canadian journalist, despite a twodecade-long police investigation.
“It makes you frustrated. It makes you angry,” Hayer’s son Dave, a former Liberal MLA, said this week as the family met with Postmedia News.
Alexandra Ellerbeck, of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said it is extremely rare for a journalist to be murdered in Canada or the U.S.
But, she said, there is an expectation that the slayings that have occurred will be solved.
“We expect to see prosecutions and justice in cases of journalists murdered in Canada and the U.S. I think there is an expectation that those cases will be given high priority and they will be solved,” Ellerbeck said.
Solving the cases of murdered journalists “is such an important message for press freedom globally,” she said.
“Truth and justice are just so important for the families and the communities. It is really hard to overstate that. It is really frustrating, especially when there is a decent amount of evidence and information.”
‘I AM NOT CAPABLE OF DEFENDING MYSELF’
The 62-year-old founder of the Indo-Canadian Times was gunned down just before dinner on Nov. 18, 1998, as he arrived at his Guildford home from his newspaper office.
Already paralyzed from a 1988 assassination attempt, he was transferring himself from his car to his wheelchair when his killer or killers struck.Hedidn’thaveachance.
For years, Hayer had used his Punjabi newspaper to become a vocal critic of violent extremist groups such as those linked to the 1985 Air India bombing plot that left 331 dead.
He had even agreed to be a Crown witness in the terrorism case, telling police that years earlier, while visiting a British colleague, he had overheard a confession by Ajaib Singh Bagri, one of the men later charged and acquitted in the bombing.
Hayer was no stranger to threats. In January 1986, a bomb targeting him was left on the doorstep of his family’s print shop. His son-inlaw saw the wires sticking out of a McDonald’s bag and called police. Then in August 1988, days after he had published details of the confession he says he overheard, Hayer was shot in his newspaper office by a youth who later pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
Months before his 1998 murder, Hayer wrote to the head of Surrey RCMP, expressing his concerns about the barrage of threats he was receiving.
“Given that these threats are escalating and becoming more severe in nature, I respectfully request your assistance in the investigation of these threats, which I hope will cease as a result,” Hayer said in his March 19, 1998, letter to then Chief Supt. Terry Smith.
“I respectfully request that you take immediate action with this regard. Time is of the essence. I am not capable of defending myself as easily as I used to when I could walk.”
Police responded five days later, scolding Hayer for not contacting them sooner.
“I am concerned that you have not brought these matters to our attention previously, given that there seems to be an ongoing series of these incidents,” Smith wrote. “We view these circumstances as most serious and if they are ignored or not reported, it makes our job exceedingly more difficult to complete.
“If you fear for your life, and you feel you are in immediate danger, you should be contacting our complaints line,” Smith said. Or Hayer could call 911 if the matter was “more urgent,” Smith suggested.
WARNINGS WEREN’T TAKEN SERIOUSLY, FAMILY SAYS
The police did investigate, Dave Hayer said. They also installed security cameras at the family home — cameras that weren’t working the night of the fatal shooting.
“My dad, he didn’t want to feel like a prisoner with the police with him all the time,” he said. “But I don’t think the police did enough.”
He said police knew that the people after his dad were linked to terrorism. And there was additional evidence from the 1988 shooting that was not pursued after the youth who shot Hayer — Harkirat Singh Bagga — pleaded guilty.
For example, the .357 Magnum that Bagga used in the 1988 attack on Hayer had been provided by a California man who was also the owner of a gun found in the residence of Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only man convicted in the Air India bombing. So Bagga had links to the Air India suspects.
“There was a real threat there. And police did what they normally do — they said, ‘Tell us when somebody is there at your door ready to shoot you.’ Otherwise, they are not willing to provide enough protection.”
Hayer named several of the suspects behind the threats in his letter to police.
His son says there should have been no mystery as to the motive behind the murder.
“It is a case just like Air India, where they knew who the people were behind the scenes … and they also know the people behind the scenes who wanted my dad killed,” Dave Hayer said. “In a case like that, where you have a lot of background information about the people involved, still after 20 years charges haven’t been laid.”
Police have continually urged community members to come forward with information. But the fact that Hayer had agreed to be a witness in the biggest terrorism case in Canadian history and ended up dead doesn’t instil confidence in other potential witnesses, his son said.
“When you talk to any Canadian, it doesn’t matter what their background is — if the killers, the shooters or the criminals threatened your wife and your kids or your husband, would you still go and testify? They all say no. They are willing to risk themselves, but they are not willing to risk their family. Our justice system does not really protect the victims.”
John Major, the retired Supreme Court of Canada justice who headed the Air India inquiry, was extremely critical of police for how Hayer was treated.
“The manner in which the RCMP handled the entire Hayer affair leaves much to be desired,” he wrote in his 2010 report. “Tragically, the murder of Tara Singh Hayer, while he was supposedly under the watch of the RCMP, not only snuffed out the life of a courageous opponent of terrorism, but permanently foreclosed the possibility of his assistance in bringing the perpetrators of the bombing of Flight 182 to justice.”
My dad, he didn’t want to feel like a prisoner with the police with him all the time. But I don’t think the police did enough.