Ajaib Singh (Bagri) and Ripudaman Singh (Malik) made their first appearance in British Columbia's Supreme Court today. Both men face charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the 1985 Air India Flight 182 tragedy.

The flight, co-piloted by Captain Satninder Singh (Bhinder), went down into the Atlantic sea off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 people aboard.

In early 1986, the Canadian Aviation Safety Board and India concluded that a bomb brought down the jet.

More than fifteen years later, after unprecedented effort and expense, in late October 2000 Ajaib Singh and Ripudaman Singh were charged with responsibility for the disaster and taken into custody.

Both insist they are innocent.

Provisions in the province's law to speed up delivery of justice make it possible for a preliminary hearing to be bypassed. In these instances, the trial moves directly to the Supreme Court. This process reduces the time taken to deal with a case by eight months to a year.

"Basically, from my perspective and from his perspective, it means that we can start getting on with things," Ajaib Singh's lawyer Richard Peck said. "We'll be able to get to trial quicker."

The media reported "The Crown announced Thursday that it will proceed by direct indictment against Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who are accused of orchestrating the bombing of an Air India flight on June 23, 1985, killing 329", the tone suggesting that the authorities were going aggressively after elusive fugitives.

In fact, the trial by the media concluded long ago. In almost all press coverage, the first item in the tragic chronology of events is the June 1984 army desecration of Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Hari Mandir Sahib, in which major sections of the complex were damaged or destroyed. The loss included key Sikh manuscripts, some of them written by the Sikh Gurus themselves.

Support for the two accused polarized the community as many Sikhs and Sikh organizations distanced themselves from the event in the belief that if those 'responsible' were convicted the problem of the community coming negatively into the limelight would go away.

In a paradigm shift, which seems to go unheeded, Sikh writer and historian, Patwant Singh, made the point of the universality of Sikh thought's application to all men, including themselves.

The question is not if the accused are guilty or innocent but that a crime has been alleged. A trial is to take place. The judicial system is to examine the facts. Conclusions have to be reached.

This process eludes the media. Without exception, in short news clips and in full news reports, the terms consistently used all along by the Canadian press - Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun , the list goes on - are: the Air India 'bombing', the 'worst mass murder in Canadian history', 'multiple criminal offences', 'worst disaster in history', 'perpetrated from Canadian soil'. And with each report 'Sikh militants', 'terrorists'.

The possible effect of this media blitz?

To the question, 'Is Canada a haven for the world's worst criminals?' seventy-seven percent of respondents seem to think so (at the time of this report) in an ongoing, current poll in Ottawa Citizen .

Arouse the national passion, the accused are guilty, it's a matter of winning a conviction.

Despite the vocabulary in vogue, the veteran BBC News while saying the flight 'blew up' uses noticeably more objective language.

The Special Report of the case at AirDisaster.com, noting that the accident proved to be the worst aviation disaster over sea, and at the time, the third worst disaster in aviation history, concluded - "Other causes of the demise of Flight 182 had also to be considered and examined. If results were not forthcoming from the various investigations the answer could still lie at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Problems with the 'fifth pod' were dismissed with the preliminary inquiry, but one other obvious source of the tragedy, almost too shocking to contemplate with over 600+ 747s flying the skies of the globe daily, could be some kind of catastrophic structural failure. If such an event had occurred, other 747s throughout the world could be at serious risk."

At least one independent investigator shares the concern.

John Barry Smith, a forty-year aviation veteran, ex-Commercial pilot and Air Intelligence Officer, US Navy, who survived a jet plane crash, goes beyond voicing concern. In twelve years of research into airplane disasters, his conclusion is that the Air India tragedy was caused by explosive decompression. Much like the phenomenon of a bursting balloon, explosive decompression is the result of a technical fault that seems to connect the Crash Pattern of four disasters. A US government report documenting at least one of them is available for TWA Flight 800.

"There was an event on AI 182 which mimics a bomb; it's call explosive decompression. It's happened before in a similar type aircraft as AI 182 and left similar evidence. That accident is called UAL 811. AI 182 and UAL 811 are mechanical accidents and not evil plots although both were initially thought by authorities to be plots by bombers," says Smith.

He explains that "the specific causes of explosive decompressions in early model Boeing 747s leave a sudden loud sound on the cockpit voice recorder, quickly followed by an abrupt power cut to the flight data recorder; events of which there are certainly four, AI 182, PA 103, UAL 811, and TWA 800."

The Air India jet was a Boeing 747, a fact that is never seen in any news report.

In a graphic history, the Ottawa Citizen in it's paper of Saturday, 28 October, 2000 mentioned 'there was no evidence the victims had been exposed to an explosion -- there was no evidence of burning, noxious fumes or explosive devices.'

Investigative reporters Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew in their book 'Soft Target - How the Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada', published in 1989 by James Lorimer & Co., provided a further twist to this sordid tale in human history.

In a touching account, Peter McCluskey, the first Canadian reporter on the scene that ill-fated June of 1985, wrote of 'mourners whose wives, husbands, children, grandchildren had been murdered.'

If there is a murder, there has to be a murderer. But whom do you hang? Arsonists? Failures? Unseen forces? Destiny?

Nooses have a tendency to fit securely around the necks of specific entities.

All reports and conclusions exclude one victim, the image of the Sikhs and their common name, Singh. While the bail hearing in the Ripudaman Singh - Ajaib Singh case is set for two days, the Sikhs have already been tried.

But is a fair trial too much to ask?