by Tom Henihan
That undercover detectives would cajole and manipulate a guileless, marginalized couple into participating in a bogus bomb plot hatched and facilitated by the RCMP, sets a dark precedent in Canadian law enforcement.
The absurd, Kafkaesque scenario seemed to have no clear objectives from the perspective of the RCMP other than to see two hapless souls sentenced to life in prison.
Having groomed and financed John Nuttall and Amanda Korody into placing two fake bombs on the grounds of the B.C. Legislature on Canada 2013, the RCMP arrested the couple. At their trial in February 2015, the Crown alleged the couple plotted to bomb the B.C. Legislature with the intention of killing people and compared the scenario to the Boston Marathon bombings.
Anyone familiar with their trial and the video used as evidence against Nuttall and Korody, could see at a cursory glance that these two individuals were gullible and misguided and without assistance from the RCMP were likely incapable of any sustained, coordinated endeavor.
If they were guilty of anything it was engaging in fantasy and dreaming out loud.
Not that misguided people cannot pose a real threat so in this instance the proper thing to do to rescue these two people from causing harm, should have been to alert their families, call a help hotline and getting Health Services involved.
Instead, an RCMP “dream team” engaged in an elaborate scheme, feeding into and accommodating the couple’s negative fantasies. Detectives spent time and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars in a malicious, absurd scenario that contributed nothing in ensuring anyone’s security or safety.
These undercover Mounties and their superiors seemed to have no greater objective than to make Nuttall and Korody’s idle fantasies a reality, or at least enough of a reality that would condemn the hapless pair to life sentences.
The question now, is not what motivated Nutall or Korody but what motivated the RCMP as the behaviour of the Mounties appears more delusional and misguided than the couple they maliciously tried to entrap.
In this case, the media was also remiss by playing into the prevailing narrative rather than amending the story line and pointing out the obvious implausibility of Nuttall and Korody being capable of any kind of sustained, coordinated plot.
Only when Justice Catherine Bruce outlined in vivid terms what every reasonable observer must have already known, describing the RCMP’s conduct as offensive and illegal, did the media move from posting shadowy, unkempt menacing looking images of Nuttall and Korody to once again jumping on the bandwagon and publishing youthful, clean cut photographs of a guileless, innocent looking couple.
“I find that the RCMP knowingly facilitated a terrorist activity by providing money and other services to the defendants that helped and made easier the terrorist activities,” Justice Bruce said.
“The spectre of the defendants serving a life sentence for a crime that the police manufactured by exploiting their vulnerabilities, by instilling fear that they would be killed if they backed out … is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice.”