Tag Archives: Nuttall & Korody

B.C. Superior Court rules that RCMP coerced couple, manufactured terror plot

Image description: A grainy low-resolution photo of a beaming John Nuttall, with shoulder-length hair and unkempt beard, sitting in the passenger seat of a car. Directly behind him is Amanda Korody, wearing a black headscarf; Korody is grinning and has a cigarette in her mouth. (Image credit: RCMP surveillance photo)

Today, after over three years of legal limbo, accused terrorists John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were freed when B.C. Superior Court Justice Catherine Bruce found that the RCMP manipulated them into planting pressure cooker bombs on the British Columbia legislature’s grounds on Canada Day 2013.

This is the first time that a North American terror-related trial has ended in a finding of entrapment, a historical event amidst an onslaught on Muslim communities by the FBI and RCMP.

Regular readers of The Alfalfafield will be familiar with the details of this case, but for those coming in late: Nuttall and Korody were found guilty last year of multiple offences related to the pressure cooker bomb incident, but they were never sentenced. Instead, Justice Bruce took up the question of whether or not they were entrapped into committing these crimes by a team of approximately 240 RCMP officers.

The longer this entrapment phase of the trial went on, the clearer it became that the true authors of this plot were undercover Mounties: Continue Reading

10 disturbing scandals that have rocked the RCMP in 2016

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson features prominently in several of the Mounties' largest scandals this year. (Image credit: RCMP)

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson features prominently in several of the Mounties’ largest scandals this year. (Image credit: RCMP)

The RCMP has been rocked this week by two major (unrelated) scandals which have once again called into question the organization’s willingness to abide by the law, respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and provide a workplace free of harassment.

The week of ignominious revelations was a low point for the Mounties in what is already a scandal-plagued year. Lately, it seems that every month features disclosures of misbehaviour, law-breaking, or worse by the RCMP.

Here’s an in-no-particular-order roundup of the ten biggest scandals facing the force so far in 2016: Continue Reading

B.C. terror trial to resume without critical evidence of CSIS’s involvement in sting operation

Image description: A grinning John Nuttall, sporting a massive goatee and wearing a leather jacket and a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "SURREY WHAT" in gothic-style lettering, is seated in the passenger seat of a car, his head turned toward the driver (not pictured). (Image credit: RCMP/Project Souvenir)

Image description: A low-resolution surveillance photo of a grinning John Nuttall, sporting a massive goatee and wearing a leather jacket and a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “SURREY WHAT” in gothic-style lettering, is seated in the passenger seat of a car, his head turned toward the driver (not pictured). The photo seems to have been taken from a hidden camera in the car’s rear-view mirror. (Image credit: RCMP/Project Souvenir)

For nearly a year, defence lawyers for B.C. Legislature bombers John Nuttall and Amanda Korody have been doing everything in their power to compel the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to turn over evidence about the role one of their operatives or sources played in radicalizing the Surrey couple and encouraging them to commit violent acts of jihad.

Yesterday, after many interminable months of procedural delays and closed-door hearings, they abandoned those efforts.

Speaking in B.C. Superior Court, Marilyn Sandford, Nuttall’s attorney, told Justice Catherine Bruce that her client had simply had enough of waiting, and was willing to abandon his efforts to obtain this critical evidence if it meant the trial would be able to move forward.

“My clients have been in custody for a long time,” Sandford said. “They are anxious to proceed and they are anxious that there not be any further delay.” Continue Reading

Massive cost of Nuttall & Korody sting raises serious questions about counter-terrorism funding

Image description: John Nuttall, with long stringy hair and unkempt beard, sits in the passenger seat of a car, his head turning towards his left. In the back seat is Amanda Korody, wearing a black headscarf and smoking a cigarette while gesturing emphatically with her left hand. (Image credit: RCMP surveillance)

Image description: John Nuttall, with long stringy hair and unkempt beard, sits in the passenger seat of a car, his head turning towards his left. In the back seat is Amanda Korody, wearing a black headscarf and smoking a cigarette while gesturing emphatically with her left hand. (Image credit: RCMP surveillance)

Back when The Alfalfafield was a brand-new little baby blog, my very first serious post focussed on a Toronto Star investigative report into the alleged underfunding of the RCMP.

The article relied almost entirely on internal RCMP documents asking the government for more money. The documents were provided to the Star by the Liberal Party’s then-finance critic Ralph Goodale, who got in a few good kicks at the Harper Conservatives in the piece. The Star attempted to make the case that the RCMP, faced with limited funds, was being forced to choose between pursuing dangerous terrorists and going after more conventional criminals.

At the time, I called bullshit, pointing to the ongoing trial of the so-called Canada Day bombers, John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, as evidence that the funds allocated by the Mounties for combatting terrorism were being poorly spent. Even then, it was clear that the pair of incompetent indigents couldn’t have orchestrated a bomb plot on their own if their very lives had depended on it, and that it was only the intervention of two hundred and forty RCMP officers that made the pressure-cooker plot possible.

Undercover Mounties steered Nuttall and Korody away from impossibly far-fetched schemes, pushed the idea of pressure cookers and a Canada Day detonation date, brought them to a Kelowna hotel for a weekend to teach them how to make C-4 plastic explosive, bought them groceries and cigarettes so they would be able to afford bomb-making materials on their meagre welfare benefits, and left John Nuttall with the impression that his life was in danger if he didn’t go through with the plot.

If Nuttall and Korody were the face of the menacing terror threat facing Canadians, if the threat their ilk posed was the reason that the RCMP was being “forced” to divert scarce resources away from investigations into gangs or white-collar financial crime, if their paranoid/delusional brand of homegrown extremism was the justification for major increases to the federal anti-terror budget, then all this fuss is just so much empty hype and noise.

The RCMP didn’t urgently need more money to combat terrorism; they just wanted more money. And rather than reflexively reaching for our wallets in response to their fear-mongering, we ought to take a good hard look at how reasonable this request actually is.

At that time, the public didn’t have any access to hard numbers on how much the Nuttall/Korody sting had cost. We still don’t have the full picture, but based on recently released figures on overtime pay for the operation, it looks to have been pretty darn expensive: Continue Reading

B.C. terror trial suspended indefinitely after CSIS refuses to discuss their involvement in plot

Image description: A beaming John Nuttall, with shoulder-length hair and unkempt beard, sits in the passenger seat of a car. Directly behind him is Amanda Korody, wearing a black headscarf; Korody is grinning and has a cigarette in her mouth. (Image credit: RCMP surveillance photo)

The trial of Canada Day bombers John Nuttall and Amanda Korody has been indefinitely suspended after CSIS once again refused to turn over documents relating to their involvement in the plot.

Specific details on the reasons for the delay seem to be subject to a publication ban, as much of the past several weeks of the trial have been. But what is clear is that Canada’s spy agency is committed to doing everything in its power to keep its role in the affair under wraps. After weeks of efforts by the defence and the judge to compel CSIS to disclose any documentation they may have relating to an alleged human source of theirs, whom Nuttall says radicalized him and repeatedly urged him to commit violence in the name of Islam, the spy agency continues to stonewall. Continue Reading

CSIS urges judge in B.C. terror case to let them present their evidence secretly

Image description: John Nuttall, a bearded white man with stringy brown neck-length hair, is in the passenger seat of a car, looking towards the driver (not pictured). Nuttall alleges that he was radicalized and pushed into violent jihad by a CSIS operative. (Image credit: RCMP/Project Souvenir)

Image description: John Nuttall, a bearded white man with stringy brown neck-length hair, is in the passenger seat of a car, looking towards the driver (who is not pictured). Nuttall alleges that he was radicalized and pushed into violent jihad by a CSIS operative. (Image credit: RCMP/Project Souvenir)

CSIS was back in court again last week fighting to keep the details of its involvement in a B.C. terror case under wraps, saying that a public examination of its behaviour would threaten national security and put lives at risk.

This is the second time this month that CSIS has requested an extraordinary closed-door session of the trial, with the media and public shut out. And this time, they went one step further:

[A] lawyer representing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service argued some of the information is sensitive enough to national security that part of the closed-door proceedings must also exclude both defence and Crown lawyers, with only intelligence agency lawyers and the judge present.

“Submissions would have to be provided on that basis or not at all,” Donaree Nygard told the judge in Vancouver.

“The circle of privilege must be maintained. … My client is willing to open up the privilege to your ladyship, but no further.”

This extremely unusual demand comes at a critical juncture of the ongoing trial of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, who were found guilty last June of terrorist offences in relation to their plot to plant pressure cooker bombs on the grounds of the B.C. legislative building on July 1, 2013. Continue Reading

What was CSIS’s role in radicalizing two B.C. bombers? We’ll soon find out

Image: an undated low-resolution surveillance photo of John Nuttall in the passenger seat of a car, with his common-law wife Amanda Korody in the back seat behind him. (Image credit: RCMP)

B.C. Superior Court Justice Catherine Bruce’s release of a heavily redacted transcript of last week’s secret in camera session in the ongoing trial of convicted terrorists John Nuttall and Amanda Korody didn’t shed a lot of light on what went on behind those closed doors. But it did clarify a few points which have up until now been obscure.

And with Bruce’s subsequent decision that CSIS be compelled to turn over any records they have relating to an alleged source of theirs means that we may soon know quite a bit more.

The transcript’s release came after a legal challenge was mounted by a coalition of media organizations, which I wrote about last week. (You can view the transcript online; here is the opening portion of the hearing, and here is the (much lengthier and much more heavily redacted) in-camera portion.)

We now know that the extraordinary in camera hearing, extremely unusual in the Canadian judicial system, focussed on requests from the defence for the disclosure of any records CSIS may have related to a certain [Redacted] X. Continue Reading

CSIS’s desperate plea for secrecy in B.C. terror case reveals more than it conceals

Image description: a courtroom sketch of Amanda Korody wearing a green shawl and a short-haired and clean-shaven John Nuttall wearing a blue suit, sitting in what appears to be a bulletproof-glass enclosure in a vaguely rendered courtroom.

The months-long mainstream media silence on the ongoing trial of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody ended explosively yesterday with revelations of a secret CSIS-requested closed-door in camera hearing this past Monday.

As a team of media organizations fights in court for the release of a transcript from the hearing, questions are being raised yet again about just what exactly CSIS’s involvement in this convoluted plot was, and about what the surveillance agency wants to conceal from the public. Continue Reading

Nuttall and Korody trial: the case for an entrapment finding keeps getting stronger

Image description: courtroom illustration of John Nuttall, wearing a suit jacket and dress shirt, and Amanda Korody, wearing a green headscarf and robe, with a court security guard standing between them.

Convicted terrorists John Nuttall and Amanda Korody are one step closer to freedom today – and if you ask me, that’s a good thing.

Nuttall and Korody, you may recall, were found guilty in June of terrorist offences for their plot to plant explosive pressure cookers at the B.C. Legislative Building on July 1, 2013. The trial is ongoing, however, with the defence arguing that the pair were entrapped by the RCMP, which conducted an undercover sting operation involving 240 officers that guided Nuttall and Korody through the entire planning process.

If the B.C. Supreme Court Justice, Catherine Bruce, finds that the pair were entrapped, their conviction will be overturned.

For some people, the very fact that this is possible is sickening. For instance, Ed Bird of Victoria says in a letter to the Times-Colonist: Continue Reading

Update on the ongoing Nuttall-Korody trial

Image description: A courtroom sketch of Amanda Korody and John Nuttall (Felicity Don/The Canadian Press)

As regular readers of The Alfalfafield will know, I’ve been closely following the ongoing trial of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, two now-convicted terrorists who contend that they were entrapped into a plot by their handlers in the RCMP.

The pair were poor ex-heroin addicts living on welfare who had recently converted to Islam when Nuttall encountered an undercover CSIS agent provocateur at his local mosque. Alarmed at the agent’s extreme behaviour, Nuttall reported him to the authorities – ironically, to CSIS itself. It’s unclear how this initial contact with law enforcement metastasized into a massive undercover RCMP operation, but Nuttall’s attorney, Marilyn Sandford insists that the two agencies cooperated, as they are empowered to do under the RCMP’s INSET program.

Unfortunately, no court can compel CSIS to turn over any documentation it may have on the matter, and Sandford suggests that CSIS may have deliberately avoided sharing anything in writing with the Mounties in order to avoid the court disclosure process.

Regardless, Nuttall and his partner soon found themselves entangled in an elaborate plot. Upon meeting somebody who presented himself as a jihadist, Nuttall boastfully claimed that he was plotting a terrorist attack. The only problem for the Mounties was that he was entirely incapable of formulating or executing any kind of feasible plan.

His early schemes involved building a missile and launching it at Seattle (which he mistakenly believed was a mere thirty kilometres away from Vancouver) and hijacking a nuclear submarine. As far as I’ve been able to figure from the media reporting on the trial, neither Nuttall nor Korody had invested any time or effort into pursuing any kind of plot prior to their being contacted by undercover RCMP officers.

Indeed, even after their handler (and an ever-growing web of extras) got them to agree to engage in a plot, he found it extremely difficult to even get them to put down the bong, turn off their video games, and leave their dingy basement apartment. Continue Reading

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