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Surrey couple caught up in B.C. Legislature bomb plot to learn their fate

John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were arrested as part of an undercover RCMP sting on Canada Day 2013
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John Nuttall and Amanda Korody. (RCMP)

A Surrey couple caught up in an alleged bomb plot at the B.C. legislature five years ago will learn their fate this week.

John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were accused by the RCMP of planting pressure cookers bombs on the lawn of the B.C. Legislature on Canada Day 2013.

At the time of the arrest, police said they monitored the couple, who rented a basement suite on 97A Avenue, for five months before arresting them in Abbotsford on Canada Day.

The RCMP claimed Nuttall and Korody were “self-radicalized” and acted independent of any national or international terrorist organization.

Police alleged at a news conference after the couple’s arrest in 2013 that they were “inspired by al-Qaeda ideology.”

The duo were found guilty in 2015 of planting explosive devices and plotting to kill persons unknown for the benefit of a terrorist group.

READ MORE: Couple entrapped by police in terror plot don’t need peace bond: defence

But accusations of police entrapment followed and, in July 2016, Justice Catherine Bruce granted a stay of proceedings and Nuttall and Korody were freed.

In her judgment, Bruce said undercover officers had been”clearly overzealous” and acting “on the assumption that there were no limits to what was acceptable when investigating terrorism.”

“There must be a balance between the need to protect the public from crime and what is tolerable police conduct in a free and democratic society,” Bruce said.

“Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.”

Crown appealed the decision in January of this year. A decision is expected Wednesday morning.

– with files from The Canadian Press and Black Press Media


@katslepian

katya.slepian@bpdigital.ca

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