Bumbling idiots or jihadi warriors?
Tapes played at B.C. terrorism trial support both views
It was late May 2013. Accused terrorist John Nuttall was basking in the glow of a West Coast sunset and bathing in self-aggrandizement. He would soon die a martyr for jihad, or so he thought.
Stretched out in the front seat of a pickup truck on a B.C. car ferry deck, he slowly dictated to his wife, accused co-conspirator Amanda Korody, his last will and testament, and a funeral request.
“I do not want to be cremated. Rather, bury me on my right side facing toward Mecca,” he drawled, eyes closed. A recovering heroin addict like his wife, Mr. Nuttall seemed lethargic, close to passing out. Or perhaps his long pauses were meant for dramatic effect, to impress the man sitting next to him in the driver’s seat.
If that was his intention, he failed. The man was an undercover cop.
“I don’t want to have any wailing women, nor crying, nor should anybody rip off their clothing, slap their faces or any other such nonsense,” said Mr. Nuttall, his wife dutifully putting his last wishes to paper, from her seat in the back. He then willed his most cherished possession, his paintball equipment, to “the mujahedeen.”
All this was caught on police surveillance videotape and played to a jury this week at the couple’s terrorism trial in B.C. Supreme Court. Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody are accused of conspiring to plant and explode homemade bombs at the legislative buildings in Victoria. Recent converts to Islam and living in suburban Vancouver, where they attended various mosques, they eventually caught the attention of police.
An elaborate undercover sting was launched. For several months in 2013, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers posing as like-minded jihadists accompanied the couple on a path to supposed martyrdom, helping plan their attack and build what the pair thought were deadly improvised explosive devices.
The bombs — if not the two accused — were harmless dummies. Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody had walked straight into a police trap.
They were arrested on Canada Day, 2013, the day their bombs were supposed to have detonated, killing scores of revellers on the legislature grounds. Their trial began two months ago in Vancouver. The Crown has already played for the jury long pieces of police surveillance recordings; they showed the couple plotting, ranting and bickering, putting themselves in an unflattering, alleged terrorist light.
But this week, Mr. Nuttall’s defence lawyer played in court lengthy portions of the police tape the Crown had decided to leave out; the segments could support the defence position, Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody were led down a criminal path by overzealous police.
In some surveillance video segments played this week, Mr. Nuttall comes off as a whacked-out anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist, and his wife as a subservient, niqab-wearing drone. They seem like putty in the hands of the seasoned undercover Mountie posing as their main jihadist contact and a second “brother,” in fact another undercover officer.
In May 2013, Mr. Nuttall, then 38, Ms. Korody, then 29, and the two undercover Mounties made a “reconnaissance” trip to Victoria; some of their conversations were recorded with hidden police cameras and microphones.
Mr. Nuttall told the main undercover officer he deeply admired the second “brother.”
“He looks like a Hamas fighter, he looks l i ke he means business, he really does,” he gushed. “Thank you for having my back and my best interests at heart. I feel psyched, you know ... I feel like I can do anything with the power of Allah.”
At one point during the group’s two-day Victoria mission, during one of his several anti-Semitic rants, Mr. Nuttall pulled out a Canadian $5 bill. He pointed to what he claimed was a Star of David, embedded in the banknote design. “It ’s even on our money,” he said.
“Wow,” said the second “brother,” acting impressed. “I haven’t seen that one.”
Mr. Nuttall, Ms. Korody and the second “brother” took a guided tour through their alleged target, the legislative buildings in Victoria. Afterward, an excited Mr. Nuttall informed the other undercover officer the buildings are filled with Stars of David, plus “Masonic and Illuminati symbols” and “the number of the beast.”
He recalled having seen unmarked white airplanes flying in crossover pattern over his Surrey, B.C., home. He spoke of “chemtrails” — supposedly, chemicals sprayed into the atmosphere from planes, but in fact just another ludicrous conspiracy theory.
Governments use chemtrails to control population growth, Mr. Nuttall is heard insisting on the police surveillance tape played this week. After spotting them over Surrey, he recalled, “the next day I blow my nose [and] this yellow dust comes out of my nostrils.”
On and on the weirdness went. Jurors heard Mr. Nuttall brag of having access to secret military information. The U.S. military had installed intercontinental ballistic missiles at a tiny Canadian Navy facility on Vancouver Island, he told one of his new jihadist “brothers.” And “256 Canadian soldiers just returned from Afghanistan in Esquimalt [near Victoria]. They came off submarines that came in here ... and [on] a freighter and a battleship.”
To their credit, the undercover officers managed to restrain themselves; they did not crack up and laugh.
Portions of the trial do seem close to comedy. The whole process would be funny, were the accusations not so serious, had police and prosecutors not wasted precious resources, casting a pair of wide-eyed, bumbling fabulists as terrorist masterminds.
The trial continues Tuesday.
Officers did manage to restrain themselves; they did not crack up