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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday July 30 2016, @12:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-play-by-the-rules dept.

VANCOUVER -- A British Columbia couple found guilty of terrorism charges have had their verdicts tossed out in a scathing court decision that flays the RCMP for its "egregious" conduct in manipulating naive suspects into carrying out a police-manufactured crime.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce said the Mounties used trickery, deceit and veiled threats to engineer the terrorist acts for which John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were arrested on Canada Day three years ago.

The couple believed they were planting pressure-cooker bombs to kill and maim crowds gathered to celebrate at the B.C. legislature.

  "The world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more," Bruce said in a landmark ruling Friday as she characterized the RCMP's methods as "multi-faceted and systematic manipulation."

"There is clearly a need to curtail the actions of police ... to ensure that future undercover investigations do not follow the same path."

Bruce said Mounties involved in a months-long sting launched in early 2013 knowingly exploited Nuttall and Korody's vulnerabilities to induce them to commit an offence.

She described the pair as marginalized, socially isolated, former heroin addicts dependent on methadone and welfare to subsist and said they were "all talk and no action."

Nuttall and Korody were recent converts to Islam. Their trial heard Nuttall say in a recording that he wanted to kill and maim countless people during Canada Day festivities in retaliation for Canada's role in the mistreatment of Muslims in Afghanistan and other countries.

Without the heavy-handed involvement of undercover officers, it would have been impossible for Nuttall and Korody to articulate, craft and execute a terrorist bomb plot, Bruce said.

"Ultimately, their role in carrying out the plan was minuscule compared to what the police had to do," Bruce said. "It was the police who were the leaders of the plot."

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/judge-tosses-jury-verdict-in-b-c-terror-trial-rules-rcmp-entrapped-pair-1.3007265

Followup to this story: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/06/27/0355225

Yeah, sometimes the dragon wins. Lucky for us - sometimes the knight in shining armor is worse than the dragon! Lucky for Canadians, anyway.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @01:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @01:05PM (#381943)

    The judge violated the absolute right of a jury of their peers to punish the accused for being unpopular losers.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @03:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @03:46PM (#381970)

    If its legal then its not some sacred "sovereign right".

  • (Score: 2) by http on Saturday July 30 2016, @05:05PM

    by http (1920) on Saturday July 30 2016, @05:05PM (#381990)

    I felt compelled to mod this down, but then I thought maybe some americans don't know the actual situation. We have this thing in Canada called Appellate Courts - more commonly known as supreme courts (you may have heard of such things) - where you can appeal any decision if you can show some error of law was made.

    And juries provide verdicts, not sentences, you unpopular loser.

    --
    I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
  • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:08AM

    by dry (223) on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:08AM (#382171) Journal

    No, the jury just decides whether the defendants did it, the facts. The Judge decides how the law will deal with the crime. The defence asked for the Judge to delay conviction and consider entrapment. The Judge decided the only reason the defendants broke the law was due to the police and didn't convict.