After the Canada Day “terrorist” bomb threat at the B.C. legislature in 2013 broke, there was an extended debate about whether the defendants were real terrorists, or just village idiots.
Regardless of the definition, the striking thing about the case was the hundreds of schoolkids who were on the grounds that day. Whatever the motivation for the planting of the supposed bomb, the chilling prospect of someone even contemplating anything that would have left those children killed or maimed made people’s blood run cold.
But the serious fades upon reading the Supreme Court verdict that found John Stuart Nuttall and Amanda Marie Korody were entrapped by the RCMP, so the charges against them are stayed.
The ruling on the absurd case from Justice Catherine Bruce is more like a black comedy leading up to the punchline at the end — it was the RCMP who did most of the law-breaking. Undercover police spent months babysitting Nuttall and listening to his lunatic fantasies about stealing nuclear submarines or storming CFB Esquimalt. The wannabe jihadist ran his mouth off for months on end to a Muslim undercover cop. But he was incapable of actually doing anything.
While the brass in Ottawa pressed for progress, the team grew impatient. They were trophy-hunters looking for a big terrorist bust, so they steered their basket case of a suspect to more achievable goals, then helped make them happen. They crossed every one of the entrapment lines drawn in law, despite having an eminent lawyer supposedly advising them every step of the way. The police team was conscious of the crucial entrapment issue, talked about it constantly, but still managed to blunder into it.
The judge said Nuttall’s ideas were “grandiose and fanciful,” and he proved himself over and over again to be completely incapable of planning or executing anything. He couldn’t even kill the ants in his basement suite without poisoning himself with strychnine.
(He was temporarily blinded and paralyzed, but didn’t call 911 because he felt Muslims can’t seek help from anyone who mocks the religion. He was so dependent on the Mountie by that point, six weeks before the bomb was planted, that he called him twice for advice on whether to get medical help.)
Reviewing months of surveillance and dealings with him, including two all-expense-paid trips for the pair to Kelowna and Whistler for planning purposes, the justice said there was ample evidence of Nuttall’s “general ineptitude, scatterbrained character, inability to think logically, his child-like demeanour and inability to remained focused.” Earlier, a psychiatric nurse had suggested he is developmentally delayed.
Urged by the undercover team to put together a coherent plan, so they could finally charge him, he was incapable of coming up with anything.
They eventually decided to try to focus him, and the idea of targeting the legislature was hatched. Police had to chauffeur them around for three ridiculous days buying bomb supplies, rent the couple a motel suite, beg them to stop playing video games, coach them all the way through the bomb assembly process and maintain their methadone doses and prescriptions. (Korody spent much of that period asleep or sick.)
“Without the police, it would have been impossible for the defendants to carry out the pressure-cooker plan,” said the judge. Undercover police even constructed the devices, fixing the botch Nuttall had made of them, and transported them to Victoria. Police put them up in a motel, drove them around town scouting locations, coached them on a target, then took them back to the mainland.
“This is truly a case where the RCMP manufactured the crime,” said the judge. They didn’t break up a specific terrorist plot. They weren’t infiltrating a terrorist organization. The couple was not in touch with known terrorists.
Bruce said police were overzealous and acted as if there are no limits to what’s acceptable with investigating terrorism. Pending appeal, the upshot of the case is the startling degree of ineptitude in recognizing what entrapment is, given that it was obviously going to be a major issue in the case right from the start.
A better legacy would be some kind of approach to treating lone-wolf haters like Nuttall that involves some simple common sense.
