Air India trial witness a liar: Crown

A man who testified at the Air India trial of two men charged with mass murder told blatant and silly lies to protect the accused, mislead the court and save himself from retribution, a Crown lawyer says.

Len Doust told a jury Wednesday that Inderjit Singh Reyat must be convicted of perjury, because the evidence he provided about two Air India bombings that killed 331 people defied common sense.

"He knows exactly what he was asked to do … but he didn't want to tell us," Doust told jurors.

'I'm going to suggest to you that the statement that he couldn't recall what he was asked to do was an obvious and patent lie.' —Crown lawyer Len Doust

Reyat testified in September 2003 at the trial of Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudman Singh Malik, who were later acquitted.

Reyat was charged with perjury in 2006, and his trial on that charge has been underway at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver since last week.

Jurors heard a recording of his 2003 testimony at the Air India trial, when Doust cross-examined him for three days.

On Wednesday, Doust told jurors in his final arguments that Reyat clearly contradicted himself repeatedly as he deflected questions, gave evasive answers.

The Crown maintains Reyat lied about 19 particular issues.

Doust said one of Reyat's most obvious lies was when he insisted he didn't know what three clocks he'd bought could be used for before eventually saying they could time an explosive device.

"This is a disaster of epic proportions, maybe the single-worst disaster in this country," Doust said.

Bought dynamite

Reyat also testified that Talwinder Singh Parmar, a leader of the Babbar Khalsa, asked Reyat to construct the bomb but that he didn't know what it would be used for.

However, in his affidavit of February 2003, he said Parmar told him the explosive device would be used to blow up a bridge or something heavy in India.

Doust suggested it would be impossible for people to forget why they were collecting articles to make a bomb.

"How many times in life do people get asked to make explosive devices? Would anyone ever forget such a request?" Doust said.

"I'm going to suggest to you that the statement that he couldn't recall what he was asked to do was an obvious and patent lie," he told the nine women and three men on the jury.

Doust said Reyat also lied about buying dynamite about a month before the bombings, saying he intended to blow up stumps near his home where there weren't any stumps, and then said he kept the explosive to use later.

Doust also said Reyat repeatedly said "I don't know" to questions and then got caught in his own lies as he tried to stick to the information he'd sworn in the affidavit.

But Reyat's lawyer, Ian Donaldson, suggested in his closing argument that his client appeared evasive because he was sick of Doust questioning him and that doesn't mean he was deliberately trying to deceive anyone.

Donaldson also described Reyat as merely a "soldier" who was just following the orders of his "general."