LEGISLATURE PLOT
Jurors still don’t know what made police focus on B.C. couple.
Jurors still don’t know what made RCMP first set their sights on John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, now on trial in Vancouver for an alleged terrorist plot. The two are accused of conspiring to build deadly bombs, with the intent to explode them at the B.C. legislative buildings in Victoria during 2013 Canada Day celebrations.
Members of the jury — and the rest of us — can only imagine what led Mounties to identify as potential terrorists a pair of recovering heroin addicts living hand-tomouth in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb. Crown prosecutors haven’t explained that part of the story in B.C. Supreme Court.
But the jury has heard that Mr. Nuttall was taking prescription methadone. So was his common-law wife, Ms. Korody. She was so drug-sick at times, she’d vomit.
Something — perhaps information from members of a local mosque that Mr. Nuttall sometimes attended — caught the RCMP’s attention. Whatever it was, the police acted. An elaborate undercover operation was conceived and then executed over several months, from February 2013 to the pair’s arrest on terrorism charges on Canada Day, hours after the accused had planted a pair of dummy devices outside the B.C. legislature, with help from undercover police.
The trial began last week, with opening remarks from the Crown and from defence lawyers. On Tuesday, the Crown called its first witness, an RCMP corporal who was at the centre of the complex police sting. Posing as an Arab businessman and al-Qaida sympathizer, the officer approached Mr. Nuttall at a Surrey gas bar, while pretending to look for a missing niece, court heard. Mr. Nuttall immediately volunteered to help, the officer testified. “He called me brother from the start.”
The two men jumped into the officer’s vehicle and drove around Surrey, on the contrived search. The subject of religion came up. Mr. Nuttall was soon quoting from speeches made by Osama bin Laden, the officer testified.
More meetings were arranged. The officer soon met Ms. Korody. He testified that he tried to play things cool, so as not to arouse their suspicions. When Mr. Nuttall introduced a half-baked plan “to build a rocket” and launch it at the B.C. legislative buildings, the undercover Mountie “told him to be careful” and to refrain from discussing it with others, court heard.
Most of the meetings between the undercover Mountie and the two accused were recorded by police, with hidden cameras and microphones. The jury is to hear some 40 hours of recordings, to be played over the next several months at trial.
By their fourth encounter, the officer testified on Tuesday, the fictional niece had been “found,” and Mr. Nuttall “wanted me to be his friend, basically.” The officer recalled that behind the scenes, his undercover team decided it was time to “check how good Mr. Nuttall would follow directions.”
The officer sent Mr. Nuttall on a number of mysterious errands; these included retrieving an envelope from one location and putting it in the trunk of a car at another place.
At one point on Tuesday, the officer indicated that Mr. Nuttall had been supplied cash for running an errand. Crown prosecutor Peter Eccles did not ask his witness to elaborate on that.
Mr. Nuttall wanted a new suit, court heard, so the undercover officer took him to a mall and bought him one. “As long as it’s not a Jewish store, any store is good,” Mr. Nuttall allegedly told the officer.
The officer testified that at one point, Mr. Nuttall played for him a number of “jihadist videos,” some showing beheadings, others showing bin Laden making speeches.
After the Boston Marathon bombings in April, court heard, Mr. Nuttall ditched his rocket-building plan and decided to fashion bombs from pressure cookers, cheap to make and deadly, as the Boston tragedy demonstrated.
“Mr. Nuttall had plans to do jihad,” the undercover officer testified on Tuesday. “He was going to do his plan, and I was going to help him.”
They worked from pro-jihadist propaganda, court has heard, and from bomb-making instructions available on the Internet. They accumulated materials for the devices, and with some advice and other help from the undercover officer and a second undercover Mountie posing as a jihadist, the two accused assembled two bombs inside a Delta B.C. motel room. A small amount of explosives was provided by the second undercover cop. Behind the scenes, RCMP explosive experts made sure the bombs could not detonate. Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody planted the devices on the legislative grounds, court has heard.
How many important cues they took from police will be left for the jury to consider. At issue — and what will help frame the pair’s defence — is intent: Were the two accused of criminal minds, plotting to commit a terrorist act, or were they ushered down a terrorist path by police?
The trial continues.