Judge in Canada Day terror plot case wrong to acquit pair: Crown

Federal lawyers have launched an all-out attack on the factual findings of the B.C. Supreme Court justice who acquitted the 2013 Canada Day terror plot bombers and called the scheme a police-manufactured crime.

In the opening of three days of arguments at the B.C. Court of Appeal in Vancouver Monday, prosecutors insisted Justice Catherine Bruce was wrong on nearly every count and made “palpable and over-riding” errors that must be overturned.

“The thrust of the submission is the trial judge failed to grapple with the true facts in a critical context in arriving at the conclusion she did,” said Chris Greenwood, of the Public Prosecution Service.

Bruce in July 2016 stayed a jury guilty verdict and acquitted of terrorism offences John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, impoverished Surrey residents with addiction issues who had converted to Islam in 2011.

She concluded the duo had been entrapped by police in a lengthy multimillion-dollar RCMP undercover sting that also involved the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The five month-long operation involved more than 240 officers, who billed $900,000 in overtime alone, and threatened “fundamental beliefs our society holds about human dignity and fairness,” Bruce decided.

Bruce, who retired after a decade on the bench shortly after issuing the decision, said police went too far with their subterfuge.

She ruled they manipulated Nuttall and Korody into the make-believe attempt to blow up the B.C. Legislature and slaughter national-day celebrants by planting inert pressure cooker bombs among the shrubbery.

“Simply put, the world has enough terrorists,” she emphasized in her judgment. “We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.”

The Crown wants a new trial.