Air India bomber gets 9 years for perjury

In handing down his sentence, B.C. Supreme Court Judge Mark McEwan said Reyat was "nothing like a remorseful man."

McEwan also said the effect of Reyat's perjury on the outcome of the trial is incalculable.

Reyat will receive 17 months credit for time spent in pretrial custody, reducing his sentence to seven years and seven months.

Crown prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence for perjury of 14 years.

Reyat had been in custody since September, when he was found guilty of perjury during the 2003 trial of Ripudiman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri.

The two men had been charged with conspiring to blow up Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, and of causing another explosion the same day that killed two baggage handlers at Narita Airport in Tokyo.

Rehabilitation chances slim: judge

The 747 jet was off the coast of Ireland, en route from Montreal to London, England, and New Delhi when an explosive device went off in the cargo hold, killing all 329 people aboard.

Malik and Bagri were eventually acquitted. Seven years later, on Sept. 18, 2010, the Crown proved that Reyat had lied repeatedly under oath during their trial.

For example, Reyat claimed never to have learned the name or other basic facts about an unnamed conspirator in the bombing, even though the man had stayed at Reyat's home on Vancouver Island for several days.

At Friday's sentencing hearing, McEwan said much of the evidence Reyat gave under oath was inconsistent with common sense and that his lies, just months after the guilty plea as part of the deal that included his testimony, "bespoke a deep and abiding rejection of Canadian values."

Reyat's prospects for rehabilitation are slim, he said.

Reyat served a 10-year sentence after being convicted in 1991 of two counts of manslaughter for making the bomb that exploded in Tokyo and killed the two baggage handlers.

He was sentenced to five years in a separate trial for his role in constructing the bomb that brought down the Air India flight.