Accused terrorists act like lovebirds as serious charges read out in court
Doubts raised that unemployed, disorganized couple could pull off bombing
Terror suspect Amanda Korody blew a kiss to her co- accused John Nuttall, who caught it, pressed it to his cheek and blew a return buss. In a brief, touching appearance Wednesday in a high- security courtroom, the lovers accused of attempting to detonate bombs at the B. C. legislature spent their time in the prisoner’s dock making eye contact, smiling and mouthing messages to each other.
“No touching,” a sheriff sternly admonished as they briefly clasped hands, eyes alight, mouths twitching with delight.
The two Surrey residents at the centre of the Victoria Canada Day plot were remanded until Aug. 7 — he, tall, gaunt and bearded in rumpled scarlet prison sweats and white runners, she, much shorter but looking equally worn in matching creased green.
Their hair lank and greasy, but otherwise appearing calm and relaxed, the pair arrested July 1 have been raised to B. C. Supreme Court, the case against them proceeding to trial by direct indictment without the customary preliminary hearing.
Justice Richard Goepel had the charges against them read out — they are accused of conspiracy and knowingly facilitating a terrorist plot by making or possessing an explosive device with the intent of planting it to maim or kill.
For a few minutes, their rapt attention on each other was broken: They stood sombrely, heads bowed as if at prayer.
The Victoria lawyer acting for Nuttall but speaking for both, Tom Morino, said he needed time to get approval from legal aid to spend more money than usual for their defence and Korody needed a lawyer. He wanted an even longer adjournment for the supposedly al- Qaida- inspired defendants, who are being kept in solitary confinement for their own protection.
Outside court, Morino said that he has yet to see the disclosure package from prosecutors detailing the police evidence against Korody, 29, and Nuttall, 38, but it did not appear to involve a controversial RCMP Mr. Big sting.
In that effective but much- maligned strategy often used in cold cases, police befriend a suspect pretending to be organized criminals and entice the person to confess their crime to a phoney Godfather in order to join their gang.
Such confessions have sometimes proven false, which has raised serious questions about the technique that involves elaborately staged scenarios.
Instead, this seems like a normal undercover and wiretap operation that began in February and ended earlier this month after the defendants are said to have turned pressure cookers into shrapnel- filled explosive devices and planted them on the legislature grounds before thousands arrived to celebrate the national holiday.
Their friends, however, insist that the two recent converts to Islam did not have the wherewithal or the cash to do what is claimed.
They have raised concerns about the authorities acting as agents provocateurs.
Nuttall and Korody were broke, unemployed, disorganized, drug- using losers.
In a near- identical trial in Portland that ended in January, 21- year- old American Mohamed Osman Mohamud was found guilty of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction during a 2010 Portland Christmastree-lighting ceremony.
A naturalized U. S. citizen born in Somalia, Mohamud thought he was planting a powerful car bomb near the celebration.
The bomb was a fake, constructed by undercover agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who befriended him. Hmmm, sound a bit familiar? Mohamud, who faces life imprisonment when sentenced, lived in Beaverton, where he graduated high school and was attending Oregon State University as an engineering major.
According to extensive media reports of the trial, Mohamud’s defence portrayed him as a victim of entrapment — an impressionable teen duped by undercover cops who encouraged him to plot a crime beyond his capabilities.
“The FBI brainwashed my son,” his heartbroken father, Osman Barre, told the court.
The government argued a record of jihadist statements in text messages, on the Internet, to his friends, demonstrated his predisposition from the time he was 15 to commit the crime.
Morino told reporters on Tuesday that U. S. agencies were involved in this case and that there are elements of entrapment here, too.
Though these are not impressionable teenagers, this looks like a replay of the Oregon trial.