Air India bomb maker to serve longest perjury sentence

Convicted Air India bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat will serve the longest perjury sentence in Canadian history, after B.C. Court of Appeal rejected a plea to reduce the term.

The nine-year prison sentence for lying at the trial of two menaccused in the terrorist plot is appropriate, the panel of three judges announced Thursday.

"The gravity of the trial at which Mr. Reyat perjured himself is without comparison," Justice Mary Saunders wrote on behalf of thepanel.

Reyat hid the extent of his knowledge of the conspiracy allegedto be behind the mass murder, the judges noted.

"Mr. Reyat's testimony ... is a stain on the Canadian trialprocess, leaving the record in that singular case incomplete. Nocase before has considered false professions of lost memory incircumstances of such scale."

Reyat is the only person ever convicted in the bombings of twoflights that originated in Vancouver.

Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in2005 of murder and conspiracy charges by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.

Longest criminal trial in Canadian history

Flight 182 went down in the Irish Sea on June 23, 1985, killingall 329 people on board. A second bomb destined for Air India flight301 went off prematurely at Narita airport in Japan, killing twobaggage handlers.

After being extradited back to Canada from Britain, Reyat wasconvicted in 1991 of two counts of manslaughter for building thebomb that exploded in Japan.

In 2003 as Malik and Bagri were on trial for murder Reyat pleaded guilty to a third, single count of manslaughter for his rolein the downing of Flight 182 and was called to testify at theirtrial.

Reyat's testimony offered little evidence, as he claimed againand again to have no recollection of events.

In acquitting Malik and Bagri following the longest criminaltrial in Canadian history, B.C. Supreme Court judge Ian Josephsoncalled Reyat an "unmitigated liar."

He was charged with perjury and convicted of lying 19 times atthe trial.

'Little expression of remorse' for perjury

Reyat's lawyer, Ian Donaldson, told the appeal court lastNovember that Reyat who has spent most of his adult life in prison was remorseful about the bombing deaths and gained nothing when he lied at the trial.

He suggested the prison term be reduced to six or seven years.

But Crown lawyer Len Doust told the judges he doubted the man'sremorse, saying Reyat behaved in the witness box like a man stillcommitted to a cause.

The Crown contended the bomb plot was hatched by Sikh separatistsin Canada in retaliation for a deadly 1984 raid by Indianauthorities on the Golden Temple, considered the holiest shrine inSikhism.

Doust told the appeal court hearing that Reyat may not haveplanned an elaborate lie, but he did intend to obstruct the truth.

"He was completely evasive, in my submission, in regard to thewhole issue of who made the bomb, and how the bomb was made,"Doust told the hearing.

The appeal court agreed.

"There seems to be little expression of remorse" for theperjury, Saunders wrote.

Appeal dismissed, judge rules

Reyat argued at the appeal hearing that he lied in order not toexpose himself and his family to retribution by others.

"This seems to be a continuing rejection of Mr. Reyat's obligation to testify truthfully, and greatly waters down the impactof any statement of remorse in regards to Mr. Reyat's overallparticipation in the plot that caused the destruction of Air Indiaflight 182," Saunders wrote.

The decision was announced at a brief hearing Thursday morning.

"The offence was grave, and in comparison to other perjurycases, the sentence imposed was not unfit. The appeal isdismissed," Judge Edward Chiasson said on behalf of the threejudges on the panel.