A hitman who was one of the two people who shot a man with a man acquitted in the bombing in 1985 of an India air flight was imprisoned for life in Canada without the possibility of parole for 20 years.
Tanner Fox, 24, was sentenced Tuesday by a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Fox and Jose Lopez guilty guilty in October for the second degree murder of the Sikh Ridomanan Singh Malik businessman in 2022. Lopez will be sentenced on Friday.
The condemnation came after an emotional morning, in which Malik’s relatives begged Fox to reveal who hired him to carry out the murder.
“We are likely to reveal the names of the people who hired you,” said Malik’s daughter-in-law, Sundeep Kaur Dhaliwal, according to journalists from the new Westminster courtroom.
The two men pleaded their guilty pleas on the eve of their trial for first degree murder.
Malik has been shot down several times in his car outside his family business in Surrey, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the morning of July 14, 2022. The police found a vehicle burned nearby.
Prosecutor Matthew Stacey told court that Fox and Lopez had provided a “deliberate murder” of Malik.
“They were financially offset for killing him,” he added.
The murder occurred more than a decade after Malik was acquitted in the devastating attack of the double bomb – the deadliest terrorist attack in Canada in history.
On June 23, 1985, the flight 182 of Air India from Canada to India exploded off the Irish coast, killing 329 people on board, most of them Canadian citizens visiting parents in India.
About the same time, a second bomb exploded prematurely in Japan, killing two luggage managers
The bombings – largely suspected of having been carried out by Sikhs in Canada in retaliation for the mortal in 1984 of India in 1984 of the Golden Temple, the holy sanctuary of the Sikh religion – remain the terrorist attack More deadly in Canada.
After a two-year trial, Malik and his co-accused, Ajaib Singh Bagri, were both acquitted in 2005 of mass murder and conspiracy linked to the two attacks, after a judge judged that the testimony against them n ‘was not credible.
According to the declaration of the facts agreed, Fox and Lopez were contracted to kill Malik, but the evidence did not establish who had hired them.
Malik’s family urged them to cooperate with the police to court who had managed the murder.
In his testimony in court on Tuesday, Malik’s daughter-in-law said that the lack of answers had scared the family for their security.
“This fear and anxiety come from not knowing who hired you,” she told Fox. “Are we next?”
According to Fox lawyer, the 24-year-old was born in Thailand and was adopted at the age of three by parents in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
“It is impossible to say where he went wrong, was wrong in his youth who brought him to this horrible offense,” said lawyer Richard Fowler.
In court, Fox got up to apologize for his actions.
“I’m sorry for all the pain and the injury I have caused,” he said.
