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Alert

Newspaper editor's assassination labelled revenge attack

(CJFE/IFEX) - After interviewing more than two hundred individuals in the
course of their investigation of the murder of publisher and editor Tara
Singh Hayer, police are suggesting that the shooting was motivated by an
editorial which appeared in Hayer's newspaper, the "Indo-Canadian Times",
rather than a political or religious dispute.





**Updates IFEX alerts of 15 March 1999 and 19 November 1998**

Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) Corporal Grant Learned told the
Canadian Press that "[RCMP] investigators have focused on the one theory
that this particular homicide was prompted as a result of a personal revenge
killing." He added that a long-time Edmonton resident was currently "at the
forefront of police interest" in the case, though police refused to identify
the suspect. On 15 July 1999, "The Toronto Star" newspaper reported that
investigators had followed leads from Vancouver to India, Pakistan, Europe
and the USA. No arrests have been made in the case.

That same day, "The Globe and Mail" daily explained that in citing the
revenge motive for Hayer's killing, the RCMP also dismissed the possibility
of a link between the deadly incident and suspects in the as yet unsolved
1985 Air India bombing in which all 329 passengers and crew members were
killed, as well as the theory that factions within British Columbia's Sikh
community who are engaged in a dispute over religious rituals in Sikh
temples were involved in Hayer's killing.

As the "Star" reported, the police's substantiation of the motive behind
Hayer's murder shocked journalists in Canada, who are worried about the
impact the incident may have in discouraging reporters from covering
potentially controversial stories. The paper recalled that Hayer's murder
represents the first time that a Canadian journalist has been killed in
Canada in connection with his reporting.

Background Information

Hayer was shot to death in the garage of his Surrey, British Columbia home
on the evening of 18 November 1998 while moving from his car to his
wheelchair. Hayer - a recipient of the Order of Canada and many other
awards - was an outspoken critic of violent Sikh extremists and had already
been the target of an assassination attempt at his newspaper office in 1988.
He had been left partially paralysed in the earlier attack. Hayer's
newspaper, the "Indo-Canadian Times", is Canada's largest and oldest
Punjabi-language weekly.