VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s highest court upheld a perjury conviction Thursday for Air India bomber Inderjit Singh Reyat, who repeatedly lied at the trial of two men who were acquitted in the worst case of aviation terrorism before 9-11.

Three judges of the B.C. Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the man’s bid for a new trial, cementing his nine-year sentence, which is believed to be the longest perjury sentence in Canadian history.

Reyat, 59, was a Crown witness at the 2003 trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who were acquitted of mass murder and conspiracy in the bombing of Air India Flight 182. The plane was targeted on June 23, 1985, killing 329 people, mostly Canadian citizens.

Reyat’s testimony was part of a deal that saw him plead guilty to manslaughter in the bombing of the plane and receive a controversial five-year sentence. He also served an earlier 10-year sentence for manslaughter for the deaths of two airport baggage handlers in Tokyo that happened on the same day.

Reyat was accused of lying 19 times at Malik’s and Bagri’s trial, when he insisted he knew nothing about the conspiracy.

A jury convicted Reyat of perjury in November 2010, but his lawyers appealed, arguing the judge made a mistake when he told the jurors they only needed to conclude Reyat lied in just one of those 19 instances.

Reyat’s lawyer, Ian Donaldson, told the Appeal Court that the perjury verdict was unfair because the jury may not have been unanimous. He argued the jury should have been directed to agree on at least one false statement.

The Appeal Court judges disagreed.

“The trial judge did not err in his instructions to the jury,” Chief Justice Lance Finch wrote in the decision.

“The necessary elements or ingredients for the offence of perjury are entirely consistent among the 19 particulars to the indictment, and there was evidence on which the jury could have found each to be proven.”

Until Reyat’s conviction, the longest perjury sentence ever handed down in Canada was six years for a case in Alberta.

It’s believed a suitcase bomb was loaded onto a plane at Vancouver International Airport, then transferred to the Air India flight that plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland, while en route to London.