B.C. legislature bombing accused’s trial enters new phase
John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were found guilty last month on two terrorism-related counts, after their undercover police-assisted plot to explode homemade bombs at the B.C. legislature in Victoria on Canada Day 2013.
No convictions have been registered, because they are now claiming entrapment, saying their crimes were “manufactured,” that an abuse of process has occurred. Their strange trial isn’t over yet. A second phase — an entrapment hearing — began Monday in the same Vancouver courtroom where 12 jurors had just determined their guilt. More information about their criminal investigation and how the police worked is trickling out.
Jurors were not told what led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to Nuttall and Korody. They were a pair of unemployed, recovering drug addicts, recently converted to Islam, who lived in a rented basement in suburban Vancouver.
Apparently, it was Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, that tipped off police. With some help from Nuttall himself.
Jurors were never told that CSIS had long been aware of Nuttall. It had been investigating him and shared information with RCMP officials, before Mounties launched their complex undercover sting operation in early 2013.
Jurors never heard that Nuttall, a lanky conspiracy enthusiast, had voluntarily spoken with CSIS agents about some of his acquaintances, people “who appeared to have radical jihadist views.”
Those compelling details surfaced in court documents after jurors found the pair guilty of conspiring to commit murder and possessing explosives “for the benefit of or on behalf of a terrorist organization.”
After plotting with undercover officers who posed as jihadist sympathizers, Nuttall and Korody attempted to detonate homemade pressure-cooker bombs on the grounds of the B.C. legislature during crowded Canada Day festivities. The bombs were actually policecontrolled duds; Nuttall and Korody were arrested hours after the devices were supposed to explode.
There are no jurors in this trial’s second phase, just the same Crown and defence lawyers, and the same judge. If Madam Justice Catherine Bruce agrees with the defence, she will likely order a stay of proceedings, and Nuttall and Korody will be freed.
The defence has almost a dozen elements to its entrapment case, court heard Monday before witnesses were called. Among them: the RCMP did not have reasonable suspicion the two accused were engaged in terrorist activities; the pair’s “human emotions” and “vulnerabilities” such as their poverty, their addictions and their illnesses were exploited; the pair’s religious rights were violated.
Defence lawyers intend to call a psychologist who specializes in pain and trauma treatment; he has interviewed Nuttall more than 20 times. Crown prosecutor Peter Eccles raised concerns, noting that a pain specialist might not be appropriate in this case. He also complained that defence lawyers hadn’t shared with the Crown the doctor’s findings.
Disclosure — or lack of it — was already a point of contention. After the jury’s guilty verdicts last month, defence lawyers Marilyn Sandford and Mark Jetté asked the court to order disclosure of “records, reports and intelligence from CSIS and the Crown” relating to the spy agency’s involvement with Nuttall.
In its disclosure application, which CSIS opposed, the defence claimed in late 2011 or early 2012, Nuttall’s then-landlord, “with Mr. Nuttall’s knowledge and consent, contacted CSIS to express concerns about some people with whom Mr. Nuttall had become acquainted and who appeared to have radical jihadist views. Mr. Nuttall voluntarily met with CSIS to discuss these persons.”
In her ruling, Bruce found “information that CSIS shared with the RCMP after the RCMP investigation began (in early 2013) is potentially relevant to the defence of entrapment because the CSIS information may have played a role in the RCMP investigation, the crafting of scenarios, and the determination of the objects of the scenarios.”
Bruce determined because CSIS and the RCMP had conducted separate investigations, and because CSIS did not “play any significant role in the undercover operation apart from conducting parallel surveillance that was not shared with the RCMP,” CSIS must only produce information concerning Nuttall “that it shared with the RCMP in or about November 2012 to February 2013, which was derived from a meeting with Mr. Nuttall or any investigation that was commenced as a result of a meeting with Mr. Nuttall.”
In other words, the public won’t hear all that Canadian spies might have had on Nuttall. Or Korody, for that matter.
But we will know — eventually — if the two really were victims of police entrapment.