Who bombed the Hilton? (15 page)

This portrait of intergenerational membership of Ananda Marga that seems to suggest an integrated and happy environment swiftly darkens when it is revealed that while the parents consider ‘the Ananda Marga sect as a religious and peaceful organisation', they are very worried about their son's predicament in Bangkok and that the Australian Government may not be providing him with legal representation. If this is the case they state they are prepared to ‘A. Lend money to Ananda Marga sect to cover legal costs and B. To pay expenses to provide legal representations from Australia.'

It turns out that Mr and Mrs Jones are willing (understandably) to do anything for their only son, from whom they are almost completely estranged: ‘Jones' parents further stated they had not seen their son since 1974 … [and added] in the early stages of their son's involvement [with the sect] they experienced difficulty in maintaining contact with him'. It is only through a series of individuals connected to the sect, no doubt aided by their own active involvement, that they have managed to get information from him from time to time through an intermediary.
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I think of Mrs Jones attempting to meditate away
the strain of knowing her 25-year-old son is banged up on terrorism charges in a Bangkok cell. A son she raised and sent to Trinity Grammar — a boy whom she has not seen for five years and who refuses to visit or speak directly to his family. I think of how she and her husband must have had to ingratiate their way into the sect because it was the only way to gather crumbs of information about what Timothy was doing and whether he was safe … One can say this, that even if the Margiis are innocent of all the crimes they have been accused of, they are clearly capable of inflicting an exquisite kind of pain on those who least deserve it.

Norm gets a photo of Timothy Thomas Hilton Jones. He looks like Jesus in a 1950s movie epic. Shoulder-length light brown hair, beard, big soulful eyes, clothed in some kind of robe-like apparel. He looks sweet. He, along with Child and Spark, is being detained in Bangkok for possessing 1300 grams of C4 explosives, detonators and a timing device. They are arrested based on information supplied by an undercover police officer who, according to a report sent from Thailand, ‘stated he'd been told they [Jones, Child and Spark] planned to detonate an embassy in Bangkok'. The exact embassy was not identified but the trio had maps with the chanceries of the USA and Australia circled.
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The actions of the Bangkok Three are so close in time to the Hilton blast one can understand the task
force's determination to seek connections between these Margiis and the Australian arm of the sect. Even the vocal claims made by Jones, Child and Spark that they have been framed by the Thai police mirror the frequent claims made by Margii spokespeople throughout 1977 that the sect was being set up.

Timothy Jones tells the Australian media that the explosive material had been planted on them to discredit the sect: ‘Just outside the hotel the man approached us and said something in Thai … I did not understand him. A moment later, police pounced on us and seized the over-sized shoulder bags we were carrying. Then they took us to our room at the hotel … The police pulled stuff from our bags, and from drawers in the room. We had never seen it before. It was a plant, obviously.'
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In Manila, Shepherd and Dyer make almost identical claims of a frame-up, as do two of the three charged in London.

To Norm these implacable young people have an unnerving steeliness and a frictionless surface that appears impenetrable. Despite the crimes they are accused of, they seem unfazed. They argue in unison, regardless of the vast distances between them, that their respective arrests are simply evidence of the conspiracy against their leader and their religion. A conspiracy that has implicated the Margiis in violence since mid-1977 and has been masterminded
by the Indian CBI, the KGB, ASIO, the CIA, and the police forces of England, Thailand and the Philippines. Despite the difficulty of imagining how such a group would work in unison, they do not falter. They stand as one.

It's a bit like the way cops stick together in the ‘blue wall of silence' when criticised by outsiders. Does Norm get a whiff of this? Does he sense any similarities between the fierce loyalties of the Margiis and those within his own brotherhood? Maybe, maybe not. What is clear is that he's looking not just for connections between the Margiis named in the recent clusters of violence, but also for a way in. A chink, a foothold — something to connect them to Australia.

From Scotland Yard to Newtown

One of the task force detectives has alerted Norm to an article published in an Indian newspaper that states that Anthony Niall Kidd, one of the London Margiis responsible for stabbing the Indian High Commission official Mr Ahluwalia on 31 October 1977 and standing trial for bombing charges, had not only confessed to the crime but had also named Ananda Marga associates, thought to be American, Filipino and Australian and ‘related his complete knowledge of the Ananda Marga sect'.
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Norm immediately sends a telex to Scotland Yard outlining the details of the Hilton bombing and asking for everything they have from Kidd including ‘details of the movements, including countries visited, by Kidd and his associates since June 1977. Also whether or not Kidd or his associates have
visited Australia, and if so, the particulars of same.' He ends his telex with a final request:

1.
Jason Holman Alexander, previously known as Jon Hoffman, born 21.11.49, who had changed his name and became an Australian citizen on the 30th March 1977. Passport number Z2669601.

2.
Timothy Edward Anderson, born 30.4.53, an Australian citizen.

3.
Gary James Coyle, born 16.9.52, an Australian Citizen.

As well as stepping up the focus on the international machinations of the sect, Norm ensures that the team keeps its eye on the domestic surveillance of the Ananda
Marga members. A list of 75 male members is sent to the Navy's military intelligence to discover whether any of them have received training in explosives.
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Norm also has the team pore over all the correspondence received from the Universal Proutist Revolutionary Federation (UPRF, in whose name the violence against Indian nationals is claimed) in Australia in 1977, hunting for a possible lead. Reading this material in the aftermath of the Hilton bombing it's hard not to be swayed by the astonishingly accurate warnings they contain. This letter sent on 27 September 1977 addressed to Prime Minister Morarji Desai is tantalising:

As suggestive as this letter and others are — think of the money spent on CHOGRM, the acts of self-immolation, the cessation of attacks between November 1977 and February 1978, the reference to Duff's attempted kidnapping of Colonel Singh and his wife and the apparent forewarning of the second wave of international attacks in February — they also mock and confuse. Copies of the letter above are sent to Air India in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, and to the Indian High Commission and to the
Canberra Times.
Besides being able to ascertain they were sent at 11.30 am or 1.30 pm from Melbourne, it is impossible to trace the sender. Each time these letters arrive it must be remembered that the Ananda Marga in Australia denied their involvement and condemned their contents. Some letters, as mentioned earlier, were forwarded to the police by the Ananda Marga itself. In polite accompanying notes, often from Tim Anderson, it would be explained that the letter had arrived at their headquarters and they were alerting the authorities — reiterating that they did not support
violence and had no knowledge of this UPRF group.

The task force assigns a full-time Observation Squad to keep watch outside the Ananda Marga headquarters in Newtown — still a cheap and semi-seedy inner-city suburb about four kilometres from the Hilton Hotel — throughout the end of February and early March. Members are watched coming and going as they undertake doorknock appeals for disaster relief throughout Sydney. There are numerous documents noting movements of members as well as attempts to interview associates of members.

In the reams of surveillance notes, some familiar names appear — those of Special Branch officers Watson, Helson, Henderson and Detective Constable Krawczyk. All of these police officers had been watching the Australian members of the sect long before the Hilton bombing. All were part of the stepped-up security measures enacted in anticipation of CHOGRM. These officers perhaps more than any others want to make an arrest — and perhaps hope to find evidence connecting Australian members of the sect to the bombing. Are they maddened by the lure of the circumstantial evidence? Are they ashamed of their failure? Norm Sheather is a fresh set of eyes; he started the day after the bombing and is untainted by anything that went before. These officers are burdened by having been charged to prevent the very thing that happened; rightly or wrongly, the effects of this
burden will compel them towards a decision that will have catastrophic consequences for the case.

But this is all to come. By the end of February things start to open up to Norm, and what starts to flow in becomes a strong river of material pointing in the direction of the Margiis.

February to March 1978

To Norm's credit, despite the emergence of a strong suspect organisation, he continues not to place all his investigative eggs in the Ananda Marga basket. He keeps a robust number of officers exploring other leads. From late February to early March the Hilton task force investigates and discards dozens of names from the list of possible suspects.

For example, it is found to be unlikely that the bombing was undertaken by a militant Fijian trade unionist.
¹
Likewise, while the three Singaporean students under suspicion (other than the student Ngee questioned and cleared immediately after the bombing) are found to be ‘anti-Malaysia/Singapore government in outlook', it is acknowledged that ‘this does
not necessarily mean that any of these persons have been involved in any terrorist type of activity, or are in fact connected with any overseas group'.
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A perky telex arrives from the Tongans in response to Norm Sheather's international call-out on 14 February requesting information about known terrorists who may fit the modus operandi involved in the Hilton bombing: