Air India perjury trial hears accused

Jurors listening to recorded testimony of a key witness at the Air India trial heard contradictory evidence Friday from the man charged with perjury.

Inderjit Singh Reyat sat in a B.C. Supreme Court prisoner's box Friday as he read a transcript and listened to tapes of testimony he gave on Sept. 11, 2003.

At that time, Reyat spent three days on the stand at the bombing trial of Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, who were later acquitted of mass murder and conspiracy charges.

Reyat was charged with perjury in 2006.

The indictment against him says he lied 19 times during the Air India trial, from denying he knew that a man who asked him to collect bomb parts was involved in a Sikh terrorist group to how the explosive device would be used.

Dynamite and batteries

Len Doust, the lawyer whois representing the Crown at Reyat's perjury trial, also cross-examined Reyat at the Air India trial.

On Friday, the jury of nine women and three men heard a recording of Doust questioning Reyat in 2004 about why he had gathered bomb-making materialsthat included dynamite, batteries, blasting caps and clocks used as timers to detonate explosives.

Reyat said Talwinder Singh Parmar, a leader of the banned group Babbar Khalsa, had asked him to make an explosive device but that he had already told the Crown as part of a plea agreement that he didn't make or arm any bombs.

"I think it's pretty clear what you made," Doust is heard saying in the recording. "Let's call it the thing that you made."

In the recording, Reyat testifies that he made at least one explosive device and tested it in the woods outside his Duncan, B.C., home but that Parmar wasn't happy with the result.

Reyat also says he bought dynamite from several sources but only to blow up stumps outside his home.

In his affidavit seven months before he testified in 2003, Reyat said Parmar told him the explosive devices would be taken to India to blow up "property such as a car, a bridge or something heavy."

"I complied with Parmar's request because I was very upset with the Indian government's treatment of the Sikh people and I wanted to assist their cause in any way that I could," he said in the affidavit.

But during the Air India trial, Reyat testified he couldn't say how a bomb could assist anybody's cause.

The Crown has maintained British Columbia-based Sikhs hatched a plot to bomb government-owned Air India planes after the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.

Gave clocks to Mr. X

Reyat testified that a man who had come to Duncan, B.C., with Parmar and was later dubbed Mr. X stayed at his house for about a week but that he never knew his name or anything about his family.

During his first day on the stand, on Sept. 10, 2003, the court heard Reyat bought three Micronta clocks and gave one to Mr. X, apparently to help him make an explosive device.

However, the following day, Reyat testified he gave two Micronta clocks to Mr. X and seemed to flip-flop on whether the man had asked for them or whether Reyat had offered them to him.

Doust also questioned Reyat on why he bought two 12-volt batteries on June 22, 1985, the day two bomb-laden suitcases were loadedaboarddifferent planes at Vancouver's airport.

Reyat testified he bought one battery for his trailer and another for his testing equipment to check circuits.

Doust has told the jury that Reyat's perjury trial is "unusual" because no witnesses will be called.

Air India Flight 182 blew up over the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people aboard, about an hour after two baggage handlers died at Tokyo's Narita airport when a bomb-laden suitcase exploded before it was loadedaboard another Air India plane.