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Reyat Defended by High-Profile Gibbons

By MICHAEL HIGGINS

National Post, Feb. 11, 2003



"David Gibbons, the lawyer for Inderjit Singh Reyat, has been involved in some of the most controversial and high-profile criminal cases in Canada. He was most recently in the news for defending B. C. premier Glen Clark, but long before that Mr. Gibbons was acting for the man police believed was the chief suspect behind the Air-India bombings. During the 1980s, Mr. Gibbons acted for both Reyat and Talwinder Singh Parmar, the charismatic leader of the militant Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa. In 1987, Mr. Gibbons represented Mr. Parmar when he was tried in Canada on conspiracy to commit acts of violence in India. Not for the first time, Mr. Gibbons attacked the police for using false and incomplete information to obtain a court wiretap order. Mr. Parmar was acquitted and was later alleged to have been shot dead at a police roadblock in India in 1992. His family have always maintained he was executed by Punjab police."
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"Also in 1987, Mr. Gibbons got a charge of conspiracy to commit murder against fundamentalists Piara Singh Natt and Harjit Singh Atwal stayed because the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was alleged to have made up a false affidavit in order to get a wiretap. Mr. Gibbons later worked on Reyat's defence at his 1991 trial for the manslaughter of two Japanese baggage handlers killed by a bomb at Narita airport."
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"Mr. Gibbons was counsel in another lengthy high-profile murder case in 1995 that ended in the acquittal of six men accused of two first-degree murders. In that trial, Mr. Gibbons represented Peter Gill, who had an affair with juror Gillian Guess while she was hearing the case. Mr. Gill was later convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to six years in jail."
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