Couple guilty in bomb plot

A Surrey, B.C., couple has been convicted of plotting to detonate bombs at the legislature in Victoria on Canada Day 2013.

The verdict by the B.C. Supreme Court jury in the case of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody came after three days of deliberation, following a four-month trial.

At about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the jury declared Nuttall and Korody both guilty on two charges — conspiracy to commit murder and possession of an explosive substance.

The Crown alleged that the couple, converts to Islam, were motivated by an extremist jihadist ideology.

Much of the prosecution evidence came from nearly 70 hours of surveillance video of contact between undercover police officers posing as sympathizers to Islamist extremism and the accused.

Nuttall and Korody were initially approached by the officers in February 2013, the beginning of a sophisticated operation that played out over nearly five months.

The main undercover officer, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, told Nuttall that he needed help finding a missing niece.

When Nuttall agreed to help with the search, the operation was underway. The officer testified that his job was to explore whether Nuttall and Korody really did pose a terrorist threat and various terrorist plans were proposed by Nuttall.

The plan was eventually narrowed down to a plot to place pressure-cooker bombs in bushes at the legislature and explode them, killing and maiming an untold number of people celebrating Canada Day.

The video showed Nuttall and Korody driving around purchasing items they believed would produce an explosive device.

The couple was taken to a motel in Delta and began assembling the devices. A video in which they discuss their motives for the terrorist attack was produced with the idea it would be released after the attack.

Video showed the couple examining the pressure-cooker bombs in a van after RCMP had planted a small amount of C4 plastic explosive in the devices. They’re also captured on video leaving the van and planting the devices in bushes.

After the Crown finished its case, the defence played another 30 hours of video that was not played by the Crown.

In their closing arguments, the lawyers for Nuttall and Korody suggested that their clients had been manipulated by the RCMP and had different motivations than the terrorist motives alleged by the Crown.

They pointed out that prior to the undercover operation, the couple were living in a basement suite on welfare, taking methadone as recovering heroin addicts and not venturing far from their home.

The couple came to respect, admire and even love the undercover operator and fear him as well, and were therefore being controlled by him, the defence argued.

After the final submissions were made, the trial judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce, lashed out at the Crown for producing a highlights video that ended with a staged explosion by police.

She said the production was inflammatory and prejudicial to the accused.

The judge was also upset that the Crown had told the jury that the defences of entrapment and duress were not available to the accused at trial and added that she was close to declaring a mistrial. In the end, she told the jury to disregard the “drama” of the highlight video and instructed them to ignore the Crown comments about entrapment.

After the jury began deliberations, the defence indicated that if their clients were found guilty, they would seek to have the verdict overturned by arguing that the police had indeed entrapped Nuttall and Korody.