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editorial

The striking down of the terrorism convictions against the hopelessly inept John Nuttall and Amanda Korody is a triumph of sorts for Canadian justice. The two may have had some very vague ideas about jihad, but it was only thanks to an undercover police operation that created a criminal plot for them, and then led them through it, holding their hands the entire way, that they came to be involved in "terrorism."

The police, unable to find a terrorist plot, created one. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce called this a "case of police-manufactured crime."

It was in many ways similar to the much-criticized "Mr. Big" gambit, in which undercover cops, pretending to be leaders of a criminal organization, recruit a targeted person into their gang. Using inducements, threats and sometimes blackmail, police trick the suspect into confessing an earlier crime to his supposed new criminal bosses. We have long called for police to stop using Mr. Big, and for courts to strike it down.

But even proponents of Mr. Big are critical of the entrapment of Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody. With Mr. Big, the police at least are trying to get someone to admit to a crime that has already been committed. In this case, there was no crime and no plot, until the police created one.

Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody were initially convicted by a jury that apparently failed to see that the accused pair could not have managed a bomb attack on the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia without the RCMP's step-by-step guidance. Unable to find actual Islamist terrorists, the cops recruited a couple of sad misfits who at times had lived on the streets of Victoria, and had been heard muttering about jihad. They were brought into a fake terrorist plot – written, directed, produced and paid for by the RCMP.

Maybe the Mounties should be nominated for a Genie. The Entrapment of Nuttall and Korody, which featured a cast of as many as 240 police officers, was better funded and more heavily staffed than most Canadian TV and film productions. And the script was an impressive flight of imagination. But police investigations are supposed to be works of non-fiction, not candidates for Best Original Screenplay.

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