VANCOUVER – A lawyer for Air India bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat says his client is remorseful about the bombing and didn’t gain anything for lying during testimony against his co-accused.

For those reasons, Ian Donaldson told the B.C. Appeal Court that Reyat should get a six or seven year prison sentence, not the precedent-setting nine-year term he received for perjury.

Reyat was convicted of perjury in 2010 for lying 19 times during the 2003 trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges in the June 1985 Air India bombing.

But Crown lawyer Len Doust says the nine-year sentence is appropriate because Reyat was deliberately evasive about key facts such as who was involved in the plot, and Reyat behaved nothing like a remorseful man.

Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first trial for supplying the bomb parts and the Supreme Court of Canada rejected his appeal earlier this year on the perjury conviction.

The bomb exploded off the coast of Ireland and claimed 329 lives.