Air India perjury verdict under appeal
‘Process flawed,’ lawyer tells B.C. court
Aperjury conviction against Air India bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat should be overturned because jurors weren’t required to agree on what he lied about before finding him guilty, says a lawyer.
Ian Donaldson told the B.C. Court of Appeal that a lack of unanimity among jurors examining 19 alleged lies Reyat told in the 2003 trial of two men accused of mass murder and conspiracy resulted in an unfair verdict.
“The effect of the ruling, coupled with the nature of the indictment, rendered the process flawed,” he said Thursday.
Reyat’s November 2010 perjury conviction came after three days of testimony in September 2003, when he said he knew nothing about the conspiracy involving Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, who were acquitted of mass murder in the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182.
Donaldson said B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian McEwan erred in instructing jurors that they only had to conclude Reyat lied once out of the 19 occasions the Crown said he was untruthful in or- der for them to convict him, Donaldson said.
He said the jury should have been directed to agree on at least one false statement.
“It gave the Crown, really, 19 targets with which to shoot with the jury,” he said.
However, he and the Crown had agreed on that instruction to the jury. The guidance was similar to what was given to the jury trying former Saskatchewan politician Colin Thatcher, convicted of killing his ex-wife in the early 1980s.
Crown lawyer Len Doust said there was only one count on the indictment involving Reyat’s testimony. Reyat was accused of repeatedly misleading the court by saying he didn’t know or remember anything about the conspiracy that led to the deaths of 329 people, mostly Canadians.
“He was lying in order to mislead the jury about a number of things,” said Doust, who failed in his bid to have the man declared a hostile witness during the trial.
He said Donaldson never suggested there was insufficient evidence for the jury to convict Reyat on any of the 19 lies, all of which had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Reyat, who was called an unmitigated liar by a judge, had already served a 10-year sentence for the same-day deaths of two Tokyo baggage handlers who were killed when a bomb-laden suitcase meant for another Air India plane exploded prematurely.