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Undercover Terrorism Sting Was Only Means To Investigate B.C. Couple: Lawyer

The Canadian Press, 13 Jun, 2016 01:16 PM

VANCOUVER — A Crown lawyer says a controversial undercover police sting was the only way for officers to investigate a couple later found guilty of plotting to murder people at Canada Day festivities in Victoria.

Closing arguments are being heard in B.C. Supreme Court into whether John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were entrapped by Mounties into planting explosives at the provincial legislature in 2013.

A jury found the pair guilty last summer following an elaborate sting, but the verdicts have not been entered while lawyers argue whether police manipulated them into carrying through with a bomb plot.

Crown lawyer Peter Eccles says the question is no longer whether Nuttall and Korody are guilty, but whether reasonable people in their position would have followed through with what he describes as "ideologically inspired mass murder."

Eccles describes the operation as "innovative and effective."

Defence lawyers have said police exploited the couple's vulnerabilities as isolated former drug addicts living on welfare to draw them into what was portrayed as a shadowy terrorist organization.

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