Uncover - S18: "Pressure Cooker" E5: Trapped

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

John and Amanda piece together their shattered reality while facing a possible lifetime in prison. As the full picture of Project Souvenir emerges in court, they start to wonder if the deception goes even deeper. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/pressure-cooker-transcripts-listen-1.6563380

Canadians care about what's happening in the world and in just 10 minutes, World Report can help you stay on top of it all. Join me, Marcia Young. And me, John Northcott, to get caught up on what was breaking when you went to bed and the stories that still matter in the morning. Our CBC News reporters will tell you about the people trying to make change. The political movements catching fire. And the cultural moments going viral.

Find World Report wherever you get your podcasts. Start your day with us. This is a CBC Podcast. I can't imagine experiencing the nightmare of forced opioid withdrawal. You're nauseous, you get cold and then hot, and you're sweaty but you're cold. Hot flashes and you feel like there's bugs crawling on you. It's like you can't even describe it. It's worse than death itself.

For John Nuttall and Amanda Carote, their surroundings make the agony worse. They're locked up in solitary confinement. Small, cold, hard cells. God knows where. The suffering blends together with utter confusion. Or really, delusion. Since the failed terror attack,

they've been grasping, trying to understand what's happening to them. I thought I was in an Al-Qaeda bunker, and it was all a test to see if I would rat. And the fact that we weren't in Guantanamo Bay getting waterboarded told me that this is part of it, right? So just keep playing along, keep playing along. me that this is part of it, right? So just keep playing along. Keep playing along. Amanda also suspects she's being held captive by Al-Qaeda.

It's a few days before she's given a big enough dose of methadone to keep the opioid withdrawal at bay. For John, it lasts weeks. He's too enraged at his captors to accept any help. As they stew in jail, the public is quickly learning

who they are and what they're accused of doing. The RCMP say they have foiled a plot to set off bombs at the B.C. legislature in Victoria. 30-year-old Amanda Marie Caroti and 39-year-old John Stuart Nuttall were arrested on Canada Day after an undercover RCMP sting operation. They took steps. Marie Karody and 39-year-old John Stewart Nuttall......about the people who allegedly built the homemade bombs...

...were arrested on Canada Day... ...after an undercover RCMP sting operation. They took steps to educate themselves and produce explosive devices designed to cause injury and death. Friends like Michael Lohr did double takes when they heard the names of the accused. Hey, man, did I hear that right? Was that John? Yeah.

We never doubted it for a second though. Like we knew, like anybody who knew John knew like, no, there's something behind that. I was still wrapping my head around this whole thing. Steven Drager, who played bass with John in Rat Salad, immediately had his doubts about the RCMP narrative. He started diligently collecting newspaper clippings about his old bandmate's case.

My whole thought was we're going to have to sit back and see how this plays itself out, and it's going to be a long process. I think right away I wondered what their true story, what was really behind all of this. Lawyer Marilyn Sanford would go on to represent John. But months earlier, when she first heard about the case, she sensed something was off.

It didn't sound like the kind of person who would have the wherewithal to be doing an operation like this. But as the case nears trial, the investigators with Project Souvenir must be feeling confident. They've gathered tons of evidence, lots of it you've heard throughout this series. We want to get as many people into this kill zone as we can get.

So how many people were you wishing to either kill or mutilate or destroy? As many as possible. I'm going to snap their necks and put their bodies in the closet. Now, a jury is going to hear it. They'll have to figure out what to make of John and Amanda,

and what to do with them. I'm Dan Pierce, and this is Pressure Cooker. Thank you. Amanda and John are kept in separate jails, alone, with an order not to contact each other. But they both take weeks to get over the idea that Al-Qaeda is behind their imprisonment. Eventually, they're sent to the regional psychiatric hospital, Colony Farm. That's where the delusion finally begins to shake loose. We got to talk to each other basically, you know, in Colony Farms, I think, in the loony bin after being in the loony bin for a month. My lawyer sent me something called the scenarios.

Yeah, when we saw the paperwork and the lawyers. The scenarios are the plans written by police for every single encounter Uncle Abe and the other undercover officers had with John and Amanda. Each one reads almost like a screenplay. The locations are laid out, the schedule, RCMP goals, and exactly how the undercover is supposed to carry it out. There were 28, and that doesn't include all the regular surveillance assignments.

There was that time John met Abe, who pretended his niece was missing for a few days. All the packages John delivered, the Kelowna trip, they were all scenarios. Everything was just like being in a movie. It was like being on the Truman Show. And Truman never found out the truth until he was a grown man. It took him his whole entire life to figure the fact out that every single encounter he had with a person was designed just for him.

And they were actors. Yeah, it was the Truman Show. At Colony Farm, they're prescribed medications, some with unfortunate side effects. Yeah, they put us on all kinds of drugs, dude. Yeah, they put us on all kinds of drugs, dude Yeah, they put us on a lot of drugs I was drooling, man I was so wasted

I'd like drool coming off my beard And I would just sit there like At one point they put me on this one medication That caused me to pretty much have narcolepsy. Like I'd fall asleep at breakfast. I'd fall asleep in class. And I'd fall asleep on the toilet. Like I'd fall asleep all over the place.

Amanda says she was given that medication because the doctor thought she blinked too much. In any case, she decided to stop taking it. For the most part, though, while the couple's waiting for their trial, they settle into life in jail. Amanda mostly avoided altercations. John, on the other hand, he got into some shit. Yeah, like fucking fights, dude. He says he was targeted, mostly by white supremacists, who called him a race traitor. I had to put in work, you know. And when I got tired of putting in work, I didn't want to do that shit. John won't explain exactly what put in work means in the context of jail.

I had to do stuff that I didn't want to do, man. Let's just put it that way. And it wasn't nice work. And I did what I had to do to survive. And that's when they came at me. And fucking I did a lot of fighting, man. I lost count. I fought, I think, 18 times or something. I think 18 times or something. Amanda says it's the people you're with that make jail really bad or really good, depending on the day. She has some fond memories of getting cookies for some of the other women on Mother's Day.

Women's jail is more like summer camp compared to men's jail. Like, it still sucks. And there are still fights. day. There were no stabbings where I was. Yeah, jail is not a fucking place you ever want to go, man. Between fistfights and scheduled mealtimes, John and Amanda try to piece together their shattered reality. And they start to wonder if the deception went even deeper. Because according to them, Abe wasn't the first person to come into their lives pushing violent jihadism. I kept bumping into Muslims, right?

Random Muslims in my fucking neighborhood who would strike up a conversation and I'd be finding out that these Muslims are all of a sudden pro-jihad, whereas before, every Muslim I had met up to this point were always saying, jihad is for defense only. Now I'm meeting,

I can't even count how many Muslims I met who were pro-jihad. John recalls one incident outside a downtown Vancouver mosque in 2012. I had gone to the mosque and I met like four guys that were claiming to be Muslims and they said they were from Afghanistan or Syria. And they said if I went and fought jihad,

they would pay for me to go to Mecca. John says he rejected the offer, then went home and told his landlord, who immediately called CSIS, Canada's spy agency. He remembers being questioned by two agents in his living room. I described the people, and they just kept asking me the same questions over and over and over, and I'm like,

am I under suspicion? You know, like, why do you keep asking me these same questions over and over and over. And I'm like, am I under suspicion? You know, like, why do you keep asking me these same questions? We've been here for two hours. Like, what else is there to say, man? John and Amanda never heard from those CSIS agents again. But sometime later, their telephone rings. We got a phone call from someone,

and he said, hey, I met you at the mosque and I wanted to come over and talk to you some more. You may remember this story from episode two. This is when Kaz comes into their life. This is the guy who John wanted to fly back from Sudan to be part of their jihad. When he comes over, they have no memory of ever meeting him at the mosque. But they invite him into their home anyway, and call him a friend. This dude, he had like shrapnel scars, like from here all the way across, just horrible scars. I've never seen scars like that in my life. I

couldn't believe he survived. He said he got hit by a landmine or something. They say Kaz would spend hours with them every day for nearly eight months. Before long, their meetings turned to extremist videos and planning violent attacks. And just a reminder, John goes by Omar now. Omar's friend would start hanging out at the house, and it was him who started talking about jihad and starting to formulate a plan. He was talking about how he wanted to put bombs in shopping malls and blow people up and stuff. And he's always trying to push this violent shit on me. He showed us videos of Palestinians with their legs blown off

and stuff. These are serious allegations, and we haven't been able to confirm them, which is one of the reasons we've changed his name for this series. But there are some things we can say for sure about Kaz. First of all, he actually exists. His real

name appears in police records, attached to a phone number and address. Phone records show John and Kaz called each other 34 times in February and March, just as Project Souvenir was getting underway. Then in April, he suddenly disappears, telling John he's off to Sudan to get married and join the jihadist fight. telling John he's off to Sudan to get married and join the jihadist fight. But just a month later, John learns that Kaz is back in Canada, living in Alberta. Alhamdulillah, he's alive and he's well.

And inshallah, he's coming back to BC soon. John's keen to bring him into the fold with Abe. But once again, Kaz goes silent. Abe quashes the idea, and John never hears from his friend again. Police look into Kaz and discover he never actually left the country. In fact, he never even left the city. On April 7th, while he's supposed to be in Sudan, Kaz reports a vehicle break-in in Surrey, which confirms he was in the Vancouver area all along. So not only was Kaz not part of any holy war,

he was working at the pancake house in Surrey the whole time. Police discuss starting a separate file on Kaz, but Sergeant Colcat decides this would be a distraction, which seems a bit odd given the RCMP's dedication to arresting would-be terrorists. So what do John and Amanda make of all this? They're convinced this all started long before the RCMP got involved. I believe that those people who approached me were CSIS agents trying to entrap me into saying, yeah, yeah, let's do this, you know.

And then when I got to the airport, they would have arrested me for trying to leave the country to go for jihad. And their old friend Kaz, they don't buy that he was just some guy from the mosque. We never met him anywhere. He was put in our lives by CSIS. We made every effort to talk to Kaz, but he didn't respond. So we haven't been able to prove this allegation one way or the other. But John and Amanda insist he was a central figure in their radicalization. Now, looking back on it, it's obvious to see that he was trying to push us

towards radicalism and offensive jihad. But at the time, I just thought that he was a very passionate Muslim with maybe a little something wrong with him. In hindsight, the couple can't help but feel they missed a lot of red flags along the way. Now that I think back, I should have realized it's kind of weird having all these people that want to be my friends. In the years I've spent getting to know John, one thing I've noticed is sometimes he loses track of what's a fact and what's just a theory. The truth is, John sees undercover agents everywhere he looks. Remember his loud phone call in the street shouting about getting into the afterlife? He believes the guy on the other end was working for CSIS as well. And Mohamed Chowdhury, who reported John for saying he'd killed a Jewish woman?

According to John, also CSIS. So there are good reasons not to take John at his word. But there are a lot of unanswered questions about ceases here. What role did they play in all of this? Why were they involved? Who got them involved? Here's Marilyn Sanford again, John's lawyer. Did they become involved because Mr. Nuttall went to them and said, there's this person here who I think you should be looking at from the mosque?

Is that what happened? I don't know. It's very curious. The question is, was there anybody playing the role of agent provocateur? Somebody who had gone in to try to rile him up. This is Amanda's lawyer, Scott Wright. I'm not saying that happened. I don't know if it did or not, but that would be the question I'd be interested to know. Not surprisingly, CSIS doesn't willingly answer these types of questions. But we did find someone with a pretty unique insider's perspective.

My name is Mubeen Shaikh. I'm a former undercover with CSIS and the RCMP and currently a professor of public safety at Seneca College. Mubeen was the undercover operator in what's known as the Toronto 18 terror case. currently a professor of public safety at Seneca College. Mubeen was the undercover operator in what's known as the Toronto 18 terror case. This was an investigation into a group of young Muslim men who plotted to blow up a bunch of government buildings in southern Ontario. Mubeen would go on to reveal his identity and tell his story publicly. By the end of 2005, when I was tasked to infiltrate this group, I was already working undercover with CSIS for almost two years.

So it was like any other case, as far as I was concerned. It was simply befriend them and see what these people are up to. In the Toronto case, Mubeen had no idea what CSIS already knew. But he found out the group was planning an attack and reported that to his handlers. So at that point, CSIS basically told me, well, okay, now that you've effectively confirmed what we already know, this is now going to move over to the RCMP as a police investigation. The investigation into John and Amanda followed a similar path. Because one thing we know for sure

is that it all started with a letter from CSIS. John Stewart Nuttall has been attempting to purchase potassium nitrate from pharmacies in the Lower Mainland. I told Mubeen about the CSIS letter, as well as the theory about Kaz being an informant, and asked him what he thought. Yeah, I think it's probably undercovers. You know, it sounds very much like an undercover operation, for sure. I mean, if it's the letter by CSIS sent to the RCMP, then you can be sure

that CSIS did its due diligence, we'll call it, before handing it over to the RCMP. What, from your personal experience, makes you draw that conclusion so strongly? I would actually draw the conclusion strongly because of the letter, the CSIS letter. And this is how an RCMP investigation is triggered. This is what happened in the Toronto case. And that letter was only sent to the RCMP and is only sent once CSIS believes that there is a high degree of reliability of that information. And that is really only arrived at as a conclusion when you have undercovers who have been sent in to scope it out using their eyes

and ears, not just interception. So the fact that it followed that trajectory tells me that there would have been a human intelligence component to that first. So Mubeen thinks CSIS would have done its own undercover work before sending that letter to the RCMP. When you send in an undercover and you're trying to find out what the target believes, in an undercover and you're trying to find out what the target believes you could go in and put out a a lure or some kind of bait to see if they take the bait you might show them some videos and to see what their reaction is right like do they are they turned on by it you know are they revolted by it do they have words to say against it Do they have no comment to make at all? An undercover is supposed to play the role of potential bad guy.

And bad guys watch jihadi videos. This sounds a lot like what John and Amanda tell us about their time with Kaz. But it doesn't explain whether Kaz or anyone else in John's orbit was spying for Ceasus, or whether he played a part in his radicalization. To answer these questions, the couple's legal team would have to go to federal court. We would love to have pursued this through the federal court to the very end of the line. But when your client's in custody and is detained, and you have a defense, even without that information, it's really hard to say, well, we'll take another year and we'll

defer the trial while we pursue this fascinating issue about CSIS where we're getting resistance. Ultimately, their effort to reveal the role Ceasus played would be abandoned. With John and Amanda languishing in jail, the legal team decides to move forward with the trial. When the big day finally arrives, Amanda wakes before dawn at 4.30am. She's loaded into a transport van with other inmates. The van stops a few times at other jails and courts on the way to downtown Vancouver. It's a lot of hurry up and wait. Finally, she's brought into BC's Supreme Court through an underground entrance. She doesn't see the swarm of TV cameras

camped out on the front steps. The vibe in the courtroom is quiet and orderly, a contrast to the frenzy outside. In his opening arguments, prosecutor Peter Eccles sets out a straightforward case. My strategy is pretty simple. At the end of the day, you have to decide, did they do it? And when you've got a videotape of them doing it and then bragging afterwards about having done it, you don't need much strategy. Uncle Abe isn't undercover anymore, but we'll keep calling him that. John and Amanda hear his real name as he's called to the stand. They watch him take a seat through bulletproof glass. But Abe will sit quietly for much of his time in the witness box. The real star witness is the

surveillance tape. It plays in court for hours and hours like the world's most confusing action movie. Paintball is the best way I can think of to train for a gunfight. The tape comes with a sort of director's commentary as Abe

answers questions about what's happening on screen. I mean, I haven't fired a real gun since I was a teenager, bro. Peter Eccles keeps a laser focus on the final week of the investigation. All you need to do is watch Mr. Nuttall in the hotel room after the bombs are planted. He really wanted them to go boom. The jury sees John and Amanda buy wires and pots,

assemble the bombs, deliver their manifesto, and plant the devices on the grounds of the legislature. The crowd's trying to portray it as being very simple. They said they wanted to do it. They took some steps to do it, they did it, the end. Nothing, nothing else to see here.

Amanda's lawyer isn't buying the prosecution's shorter, edited version. It's a very easily digestible narrative and we were saying, no, no, no, no, no. There's a lot more that went into this thing. You know, you don't get, you can't understand the end unless you understand the entirety of the journey that gets you there.

The defense wants the jury to see evidence from the whole investigation. The prosecution objects again and again, arguing it's not relevant. Finally, the judge allows the early recordings into evidence. It takes more than a month to get through it all. I can't even remember how many hours there were of video and audio. But it was an unbroken stream of murder, mayhem, and hate.

As new details emerge, the media spectacle kicks into high gear. Reporters can't help but notice John's active imagination. Surveillance video shown in court captured Nuttall sharing his plan for an alleged attack in B.C. Some of his plan seems straight out of an action movie. And then I roll out of the truck with my AK. I let the truck get ahead of me a few hundred meters and then I press the button and boom. ahead of me a few hundred meters, and then I press the button, and boom. The trial itself was fascinating because obviously you're dealing with extremely serious stuff, right?

Terrorism allegations, my goodness, that's as serious as something gets. And yet, the absurdity of some of these videos and scenarios and how things were unfolding, there were times where folks couldn't help but laugh. Compared to a Rambo sequel, the plot is pretty tedious. Still, there are some undeniably shocking twists. And John seems to try out a few different characters. And he just hops back in, happy as can be, in this, and you're just not ready for it. And he's in this construction vest and his hard hat. Yeah.

Scott says the jurors were holding back chuckles. But you can probably guess who's keeping a straight face this whole time. They may have it presented in some manner as almost the comic relief. You know, the bumbling fool and the team of bad guys who always drops the ball and makes the mistakes. That's all well and good, but that bumbling fool is still quite happy to put a bullet in your head. Marilyn Sanford is no stranger to tough, complex cases. She's represented some infamous criminals over the years, like serial killer Robert Pickton.

Defending John was different. This was surprisingly not a case where I had people emailing me and leaving messages, oh, how can you sleep at night representing this fellow? It was very much the opposite. A fair number of people reached out to me to say, this case stinks, keep up the good work. Very much the opposite. A fair number of people reached out to me to say, this case stinks, keep up the good work. Marilyn presses Abe about John and Amanda's vulnerabilities.

Their isolation. Their history with drugs. Their reliance on undercover cops for food and rides. And the religious advice RCMP gave them along the way. As each side makes its case, an awkward tension starts to build. Prosecutor Peter Eccles is getting into heated arguments with the judge, Catherine Bruce. The other lawyers in the room say it's not a normal disagreement. This is something else. I hadn't seen something like that before.

I hadn't seen the court ask counsel not to yell at them. The frequency of the clashing was interesting. All of this boils over during closing arguments. The prosecution plays a 42-minute highlight reel for the jury. The part that I found in that video that I seriously thought even of cutting out was the very, very, very end of it. The test bomb exploding. Very dramatic ending. At Coquitlam Range for detonation of simulated devices. This explosion footage, it's not John and Amanda's bombs going off.

The ones they built were duds. But police made a close enough replica and let her rip in an empty field. So why not end with what they wanted to do, the culmination of their plan, their dream? The judge is not happy about the explosive finale or the repackaged evidence. Justice Bruce basically said to the Crown, tell me why I shouldn't declare a mistrial. The fiery exchange makes the evening news. That dramatic video production took my breath away with its impropriety, said Judge Catherine Bruce to Crown Lawyer Peter Eccles. If it was so outrageous, why didn't anyone say

a word before I stood up and tainted the jury with it? I frankly would have found a mistrial entertaining. Because we just start the trial over again. With a different judge. In the end, the trial carries on. The jury deliberates for three days. That jury, they didn't rush. They heard everything, they heard every argument. They considered every argument. And they come back with a verdict. A jury in B.C. has found a couple guilty of trying to bomb the provincial legislature.

These accused weren't just a little bit guilty. They were all the way guilty. They weren't just trying to hurt a few people or damage a building to make a political statement. They were trying to kill and maim. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. That might sound like the end of the line for John and Amanda. Case closed. Time to move on to a lifetime in prison. But it's not over. Not yet, anyway. Yes, the jury agreed the couple planted bombs and intended to kill. But remember, there's still this question of entrapment. So entrapment is a defense.

It's a defense that operates a little unusually. You raise it after you've been found guilty. The jury has done its job, and the judge takes over. Now the question at hand is more complicated. Did the police go too far? So at this point, police conduct is essentially on trial, not John and Amanda. Our producer Sarah Berman, who was actually in the courtroom covering the trial. This allows the defense to dig up all these internal RCMP discussions

that we've heard about throughout the series. We finally get to hear testimony from the cover officer, Stephen Matheson, and lead investigator, Bill Colcat, all the major players. I think I remember Marilyn calling the witnesses a parade of police. Pretty much.

And it's at this stage that we hear how many internal warnings investigators received. Like an in-house lawyer saying, hey, wait a second, let's not have cops commit crimes in the process here. Seems like reasonable advice. There is one witness who isn't a cop, though. Dr. Omid Safi. He's the director of the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University. If the surveillance tape was the star witness during the jury trial, Dr. Safi is the crowd pleaser this time. He breaks down the religious issues. Oh, yeah. And what does he say about this follow your heart advice that John kept getting?

Dr. Safi says that's almost the opposite of what's taught in the Quran. As a Muslim, you're supposed to resist your base impulses, not act on them. He says some of Abe's advice ignored free will to an absurd degree. Interesting. So then what does the judge do with all that? The judge has a lot to consider. What rewards John and Amanda were offered? Were they threatened? So then what does the judge do with all that? The judge has a lot to consider. What rewards John and Amanda were offered?

Were they threatened? There's John and Amanda's attachment to Uncle Abe and the religious justifications. But then on the other hand, there's also public safety. She's deciding, did police act in good faith here? Did they exert just enough control over John and Amanda so they wouldn't hurt anyone? Or did they cross the line and determine their every move? John and Amanda's lawyers get to work picking apart every element of entrapment.

Like, were there inducements to commit the crime? So our law is very clear that you have to be extremely careful about offering money, for example. Now, in this case, the RCMP didn't have to throw around large sums of money. These were people with very little money to begin with. So it's $100 here, $200 there. Here's a trip to Whistler.

Here's a trip to the interior, here's a new suit, here's a hard drive, here's some food from the Afghan restaurant. Now there aren't social assistants in the methadone program. They have limited resources. $1,200 means a great deal more to them than it might to, say, Mr. Bezos. But balance that against what they are being asked to engage in. Does a couple of hundred bucks here and there constitute a sufficient inducement for a reasonable person in their position to commit mass murder? Well, no. Police testify that John and Amanda were never explicitly threatened. The defense counters, look, they thought they were dealing with terrorists. The undercover operator was posing as a terrorist, heavily connected to international terrorism.

So a frightening sort of background was what was being presented. On the other hand, remember all those times Abe said to John, you don't have to do this. I can take you home right now and we'll still be friends. It's very hard to argue you've been entrapped into committing mass murder when you have so many opportunities to walk away. As the lawyers duke it out, John and Amanda struggle with the separation. Before this, they were never apart.

Except when John was off with his undercover police buddies. In court, at least they get to see each other. Well, for most of the trial, I sat and pretended to take notes. But actually, I just wrote him, five-page letters every day. John arrives separately at the start of each morning and gets hauled off in a different direction every afternoon. But John and Amanda told me the stars align for them just once, when distracted handlers put them on the same elevator.

They put us in together at the courthouse, and we got to have a kiss then. And then they're like, get out, get out, get out, out, out, now, now, now. After they took him out of the elevator, she's like, are you okay? And I'm like, that's my husband. I love him. By the summer of 2016, John and Amanda have spent three years of their lives in jail. A year and a half of it has been a blur of early morning wake-ups

and milk-run van trips to the court. On July 29th, they'll finally learn their fate, whether that's a lifetime of incarceration or another chance at freedom. lifetime of incarceration or another chance at freedom. It's a sunny Friday when John and Amanda are escorted to their usual seats. The courtroom is already filled to capacity.

Justice Bruce begins reading from her 300-page decision. She slams Colcat and Abe for giving unreliable testimony. Let me just read part of this decision because some of it is scathing. The police were clearly overzealous and acted on the assumption that there were no limits to what was acceptable when investigating terrorism. Within their ranks, there were warnings given and ignored. Anyone who disagreed with Sergeant Colcat's views saw their roles and influence over the course of the operation minimized or eliminated. The specter 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, and by quashing all doubts they had in the religious justifications for the crime, is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice. As this is read out loud, it takes a minute to sink in for John and Amanda. Well, he looked over at me and he's like, what does that mean? Because she had just read out this long decision, right? And I could see how it could be easy to get lost in there.

And I was like, I think they're going to let us go. And I said, does this mean we can go home now? And he said, yeah. Keep in mind, this has never happened before with a terror case in Canada. Only in three cases like this have lawyers even attempted an entrapment defense. All of them failed.

So it's hard, even for Marilyn and Scott, to believe the words coming out of the judge's mouth. At the very end, Justice Bruce closes with a devastating line. Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. She says, we do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people. This was a case where it wasn't in the gray area. It's not like the judge said, well, it's close to the line. She hammered them. The charges are thrown out.

John and Amanda are allowed to walk free. John steps out of the downtown Vancouver courthouse in a gray suit and white Velcro shoes. His face is clean shaven. It's an odd sight. The only time I've ever seen John without his beard. And he looks jacked. He's clearly been working out in jail. The TV cameras are waiting. John makes a few comments, thanking his lawyer, the judge, and his creator, Allah. A few minutes later, Amanda walks out the front door. John beelines over to her.

Maureen, his mom was waiting, and our lawyers were waiting, and I just wanted to kiss him and hug him. Yeah, that kiss was kind of immortalized. John and Amanda lock arms around each other and kiss, like their lives depend on it. It's a Hollywood moment that would be all over the evening news. It's kind of like the ending of that movie Natural Born Killers, when they get out and they have their first kiss, you know?

That's what it was like. Of all the happy endings John could have chosen from the entire history of cinema, of course he picks the one with two mass murderers bathed in blood and mayhem. But I can see how they must have felt like Mickey and Mallory in that moment. The only two people on earth. John pulls his mom in for a big hug as well. One silver lining of this fiasco is that it did bring John and his mother back together. Maureen would stand by her son throughout the trial, even in front of the TV cameras. It makes me so angry that the cops did that to my son and to Amanda that I just pray that those police get what's coming to them.

John carries their box of belongings and hails a cab. He's done with reporters. What's first on your list, John? Get in a cab and drive away from here. Okay. Amanda? I'm gonna go wherever he goes. Okay. They head to a restaurant in East Vancouver, where John and Amanda eat their first meal as free people. It must have been the best meal of their lives after three years of prison food. But Maureen remembers

something wasn't sitting right with her son. John said to me, he said, see that guy over by the tree? He's an undercover cop. This could just be John seeing cops behind every bush. Or maybe he's on to something. The three of them finish their lunch and get into a cab, but as they pull onto a side street, the hammer drops. Amanda and John are arrested and

hauled off to jail again. John's old bandmate, Steven Dreger, calls this the ultimate insult to injury. That was the most heinous thing that they possibly could have done to him. Can you imagine the feeling of spending that time in prison, being told, oops, sorry, you go sit down and have lunch and cop cars screeching. At this point, you got to be thinking, I'm never going to be a free man. There's nothing that's ever going to get me out of this. John and Amanda are booked and immediately released. The RCMP had filed paperwork for a peace bond earlier that morning.

The couple isn't allowed to have any guns or explosives or go anywhere near the Victoria legislature. What soon becomes clear is that this isn't anywhere near over. The prosecutors are, of course, going to appeal the entrapment decision. That'll be another two and a half years of waiting. If the appeal court ruling goes their way, they'll remain free. If it doesn't, they could end up back in prison for the rest of their lives. In December 2018, the BC Court of Appeal rules on the case. The decision is a mixed bag. They

actually disagree with Justice Bruce on a few points. But the bottom line, she got it right when she said the police manufactured the crime. Her finding of entrapment stands. These were folks who didn't have the means, the ability to do anything without the police's involvement. That's really what this case was about is, did the police manufacture the crime? Were they the primary actors in this? And both levels of court answered that in the affirmative. The appeal court absolutely scorches the cops, writing, the RCMP knew early on that the accused did not have the ability to commit an act of terrorism. They pushed the accused to create a workable plan when they were unable to do so on their own.

The overall conduct of the investigation was a travesty of justice. And just like that, their legal purgatory is over. John and Amanda are finally free. I think it's fair to say that had the cops foiled an actual terrorist attack, most people wouldn't be too concerned about the price tag. But in this case, some public accounting is definitely in order. With more than $90,000 in expense claims and $900,000 in overtime paid to officers, the publicly disclosed cost of Project Souvenir topped a million bucks. That doesn't even include the salaries of the 240 officers who worked the case. And if you're wondering whether there was any accountability for the force,

we don't know of any consequences for the command team. Punishing officers for bungling a case isn't really part of the RCMP's culture. But John's lawyer, Marilyn Sanford, says this case has sent a powerful message. We draw the line in Canada on what we're going to allow our police to do. We draw the line. This court drew the line.

The Court of Appeal agreed. The line's drawn. The fight against terror doesn't mean we throw everything out the window, including people's rights not to be entrapped, just because we're concerned about terrorism. Many Muslims in Canada are deeply disturbed by the news of John and Amanda's entrapment. The couple's earliest mentors in the Muslim community, Imtiaz and Haroon, are rattled by what went down. When they found out that it was entrapment, it was like, I was really angry.

I still am very angry at what happened to them. How their lives have been taken like this. And how they have been affected by it, and they've been labeled terrorists. It's horrible. It's fucking bullshit. You know, the fact that they were newly introduced to the faith and then their faith was used against them,

it's despicable. They should receive an apology. They should receive compensation for what happened to them and for their future. Maureen is still angry and traumatized by what the RCMP did to John and Amanda. I just hope those people burn in hell that did that to my son and his wife. It's absolute evil what they did. They were the most vulnerable people in society.

For them to just pick on them like that and scare the hell out of them for the rest of their lives. They destroyed not only their lives, but my life, my mom's life, and our whole family. It's just horrifying. But John's old friend, Michael Lohr, doesn't want people to lose sight of an important fact. That Amanda and John believed they were planting those bombs. Regardless of whether the RCMP set them up, and they did, there's no question about that. He thought it was real. He thought it was. And we can't forget that.

And it's like, dude, did you think that, like, freaking, your brother could have been there, your mother could have been there, your grandmother could have been there. That needs to be addressed. And maybe he has come to terms with them. And again, great John, love you. I hope you did. And I hope you realize how that was twisted and how wrong that was. And I hope he has good spiritual people that are guiding him to a good path. John and Amanda have people like Imtiaz and Haroon back in their lives.

And they want everyone to know they're just trying to live as good Muslims. Since I got out of prison, I've spoken to real Muslims who've taught me Islam is about love and forgiveness and giving charity. Unless someone is trying to kill you, you have no right to take someone else's life. You can never create good out of evil.

Good will never be a product of evil. There's no denying the couple said and did some violent, scary stuff. But there must be better options for dealing with two misguided converts. Rather than trying to get them to plant weapons somewhere, we try to get them into conversation with experts, with authority figures, with communities. And there is a track record of this being successful. I would think that that would be the first place that you go. This is Rumi Ahmed, professor of Islamic law at the University of British Columbia. He has his own stories about getting random phone calls out of the blue

that are eerily similar to the ones John and Amanda described. You know, I've had experiences where someone I've never met before insists on meeting in a park somewhere and says they have met the great leader. It's time to attack and it's time to build our resources. And you know this person is an informant who's trying to entrap you. It's pretty easy to just say to that person, you know, I'm not interested in any way, but it is sad to feel that because of the religion that you belong to, someone would assume that you have some malintent.

We don't know much about how CSIS operates, and a spokesperson for the agency declined our interview request. But there are countless stories of Muslim Canadians being approached by agents. These encounters have made many Muslim people feel targeted, surveilled, and harassed, simply because they're Muslim. I mean, this is a prime example of state Islamophobia. And when the government says, oh, we're against Islamophobia, well then why did this happen? We shouldn't be spending all this money in entrapping innocent people.

When there's surveillance in our communities in our mosques and that our people are being trapped as terrorists how does that make me feel it makes me feel very angry that needs to change this needs to stop happening After their legal battle ended, John and Amanda got all their stuff back. Amanda's lawyer, Scott Wright, had the task of picking everything up. That was an interesting experience

going to the RCMP headquarters there out in Green Timbers and collecting all of their belongings that had been seized, which was a number of paintball guns and equipment and things. I'm no gun expert. They looked like real guns to me. And so I'm walking out of the RCMP headquarters there with what looks like AK-47s or something.

John remembers some other notable items that were returned by police. After the absurd lengths they'd gone to try and foil the supposed bomb plot. They gave us all the bomb making materials back. They gave us all the wiring. They gave us the batteries. They gave us the wire cutters, the soldering gun. They gave us even one of the pots back. Everything we need to make a bomb.

They gave us including this laptop. And when I logged this laptop on, it was open to a bomb making recipe i threw it all in the garbage and that's when i started screaming at the walls i know you're listening you goofs i said i'm not gonna make any more bombs for you people you know i wish God I had fucking made a video of me unpacking this shit. Since then, life for John and Amanda has pretty much gone back to how it was before. Getting by on welfare, praying, and gaming. They live in a basement apartment in a big suburban house in a quiet neighborhood. Their suite is small and dark, just a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen.

But they keep it tidy. One glimmer of hope in their lives is, after everything they've been through, John and Amanda are still together and still very much in love. They were common-law partners when they went to jail. As soon as they got out, they got married in a mosque by an imam. The two of them are reconnecting with their families, mending relationships that got severed

by their misadventures with Uncle Abe. They're just trying to rebuild, I think, a little bit. This is John's half-sister, Hannah. It's getting better, you know. I've been talking to him a lot more lately and just trying to give him some love and support and know that he isn't alone, that they can reach out anytime.

And I wish the best for them. I want them to have that peace for themselves and not have to live in peace for themselves, you know, and not have to live in fear. But John's mom, Maureen, still worries about them. They have a very simple life. They're off drugs. That's awesome. They're never going to be the same.

Like, John especially has horrific nightmares. He stays up all night. Usually he just, you know, almost has to sleep during the day. It is horrible still, that part of it. To make matters worse, John's granny, who pretty much raised him, recently passed away. John and Amanda are really torn up about it. These days, they mostly just keep to themselves. The pandemic has kept them isolated from the community. And they've fallen pretty deep down the COVID conspiracy rabbit hole.

People yelling the loudest to push this vaccine, so-called vaccine, are the same people who think there's too many people on Earth. Bill Gates, dude, Bill Gates is always... They talk endlessly about global genocide and communist takeovers. It can be a lot. But Imtiaz says they've managed to find a path. I was afraid that they were going to lose faith and they were going to walk away from Islam. But no, they said no.

It actually made it stronger. The faith is still strong. It's keeping them clean. It's keeping them clean. And it's so important that after everything they went to, they're still clean. They didn't go back to drugs. And that speaks to their faith, their trust in Allah and love for each other, actually. While their belief in a higher power may be stronger than ever, there is this moment near the end of our very first interview

that shows just how badly their faith in humanity has been shaken. When they tell me they can't rule out that I might be another cop. No offense if I just assume that you could be one of them too. Fair enough. Well, for the record, I'm not. For what that's worth. And we believe you for the most part, but it's always in the back of our mind that it's a possibility. Yeah, man, you never know, right?

This could be another Mr. Big. Pressure Cooker was written and produced by Sarah Berman, Rafferty Baker, and me, Dan Pierce. Mixing and sound design by Rafferty Baker. Our digital producer is S.K. Robert. Jeff Turner is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Chris Oak. And Arif Noorani is director.K. Robert. Jeff Turner is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Chris Oak, and Arif Noorani is director of CBC Podcasts. Uncle Abe's voice was performed by Siavash Desvare.

The voice of Mr. Big was performed by Matt Humphrey. Our theme song is by Humans. Special thanks to Graham MacDonald, Taranam Kamlani, David Jones, Maria Lanrobotai, Keith Hart, and Brenda Kilpatrick. And to John Nuttall and Amanda Karody, who go by Omar and Anna now. Thank you for telling your story and for trusting us to share it here. Thanks for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.