Relatives of the 329 people killed on Air India Flight 182 will gather from around the world in Vancouver today to learn the fate of two Sikh militants on trial for the bombing.
Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri are charged with murder and conspiracy for what police allege was a plot by Vancouver-based Sikh separatists to simultaneously destroy two Air India jets in 1985 as revenge on the Indian government.
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Ian Bruce Josephson, who is deciding the case without a jury, will issue his verdict today after three months of deliberation.
Arguments and witness testimony in the trial took 19 months.
The mid-air explosion that ripped through the Boeing 747 off the Irish coast on June 23rd, 1985, was a bloody chapter in a religious war that has since faded from world attention.
It pitted the Indian government against militants fighting for an independent Sikh homeland. Prosecutors say the bombers wanted revenge for the Indian Army's 1984 storming of Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar.
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 Narita airport to Air India Flight 301, killing two workers and injuring four others.