Give Air India perjurer long sentence: Crown

Inderjit Singh Reyat's lies in the witness box denied justice to the families of hundreds of people who died in two Air India bombings and he deserves a sentence that's close to the maximum allowable, the Crown says.

Prosecutor Len Doust told the judge who will sentence Reyat for perjury that the convicted bombmaker also minimized his own involvement in the plot.

Reyat was convicted in September of committing perjury during his testimony at the 2003 trial of two other men accused of mass murder and conspiracy in the 1985 blasts.

'It's difficult to conceive a more serious crime in relation to which perjury might be committed.' —Crown prosecutor Len Doust

Reyat's evasiveness left many questions forever unanswered about the role that Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri may have played in the terrorist explosions that claimed 331 lives, Doust said in his sentencing submission in Vancouver Wednesday.

Malik and Bagri were acquitted in 2005 after a lengthy trial.

The judge at the Air India trial called Reyat "an unmitigated liar," and the Crown accused him of lying 19 times under oath.

"It's difficult to conceive a more serious crime in relation to which perjury might be committed," said Doust, the Crown lawyer who cross-examined Reyat for two days at the Air India trial.

"This was, so far as I can ascertain, the most serious criminal offence in the history of our country," he told B.C. Supreme Court.

Perjury carries 14-year maximum

Perjury carries a maximum sentence of 14 years but the longest sentence ever handed out in Canada was six years in an Alberta case, Doust said.

He said Reyat's sentence should be at the high end of the spectrum, with the maximum sentence reserved for someone whose testimony leads to a wrongful conviction.

Reyat, 58, made a plea agreement to serve a five-year manslaughter sentence for the deaths of 329 people aboard Air India Flight 182, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 23, 1985 after leaving Montreal.

He had already served a 10-year sentence for the same-day explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport, where two baggage handlers died when a suitcase bomb meant for Air India Flight 301 exploded prematurely.

As part of the Air India Flight 182 deal, a "substantial concession by the Crown," Reyat agreed to tell the truth at Malik and Bagri's trial, Doust said.

But in court, Reyat repeatedly replied "I don't know" and "I don't remember" when asked about his role in collecting explosives used to construct a bomb that was placed inside a suitcase loaded aboard a flight in Vancouver and then transferred to an Air India plane in Toronto.

"Perhaps the most serious aggravating factor in this case is Reyat's demonstration of contempt for the criminal justice system in its effort to determine what occurred, who was responsible for it and to bring them to justice," Doust said.

He said the families were forced to swallow a "bitter pill" when Reyat received the five-year sentence but then failed to live up to his obligation to tell the truth.

"There are fathers, mothers, children and so on. These people have lived with this forever in the hope that at some point there would be justice for them."

Revenge plot

During his testimony, Reyat said he didn't know the name of a man who'd stayed at his Duncan, B.C., home for almost a week and with whom he went shopping for bomb parts. Reyat testified that he was asked to build a bomb that could blow up a bridge or something heavy in India, where he wanted to help people.

"We don't know the truth of what Reyat really knows. He concealed, in the Crown's submission, virtually everything of consequence that would have been of any assistance relevant to Malik and Bagri."

Reyat's lawyer, Ian Donaldson, who has called for a two- to three-year sentence, said Wednesday that his client has already been punished enough for his role in the Air India bombings by serving the equivalent of 25 years behind bars.

However, Justice Mark McEwan said the perjury conviction is a separate matter stemming from Reyat's duty as a citizen to tell the truth under oath.

"The essence of the charge is that he did not say what he knew," McEwan said.

The Crown maintains the bombings were a plot by British Columbia-based Sikh extremists targeting government-owned Air India as an act of revenge.

In June 1984, a year before the bombings, hundreds of Sikhs died when the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar in an effort to oust Sikh separatists fighting for an independent homeland.