VANCOUVER — A pair of accused terrorists recorded a video calling on Muslims to rise up and join a holy war for Islam — no matter the cost — days before their alleged Canada Day plan to detonate pressure-cooker bombs at the provincial legislature, their trial heard Monday.
A B.C. Supreme Court jury watched a video that shows John Nuttall and his wife Amanda Korody outlining their motivation.
Nuttall, whose face is concealed behind a white-and-black head scarf, says Canada has declared war on Islam by killing Muslims and refusing to recognize Palestine's right to exist.
"Fight them — don't ever stop fighting them," he says in a video recorded June 29, 2013.
"We are people who embrace death the way you embrace life."
Nuttall and Korody are seated next to each other on a mottled, motel-room bed cover. A black flag decorated with white, Arabic writing hangs in the background on a non-descript, tile wall behind them. The flag is held up by two diagonal strips of duct tape.
Korody, dressed in a black shawl, calls on Muslims to fight what she describes as the "Godless heathens."
"If you have a stone, throw it; if you have a bomb, drop it," she says.
"If all you can do is give them the finger, then give it to them."
The final version of the video shown to the jury opens with the camera panning slowly over three pressure-cooker bombs, two detonation timers and Nuttall's laptop sitting open to an extremist online magazine he credits as being his inspiration.
Undercover RCMP officers posing as accomplices recorded the video for the pair inside a motel room near Vancouver, which served as a staging area.
The plan, the trial heard, was for an edited version of the video to be released after the alleged bombing.
Two undercover police officers were in the motel room at the time of the recording: one playing the role of an Arab businessman, who had been the couple's main contact during the months-long RCMP investigation, and another posing as a filmmaker brought in to create the video.
In a separate video played for the jury Monday, shot from above using a concealed camera, Nuttall appears dissatisfied with his initial performance and requests a second take.
In the second filming, Nuttall quotes Osama bin Laden, but soon afterwards chastises himself after realizing he has misquoted the dead al-Qaida leader.
"I just made an ass of myself," he said, asking the Arab businessman to remind the filmmaker to delete the misquote.
Nuttall also clarified with the businessman that the video was not intended for a martyr mission, which had been initially discussed.
While both he and Korody said previously they would be willing to die for the cause, Nuttall says he now plans to travel to Pakistan to fight for an Islamic regime following the alleged Victoria attack.
Nuttall emphasized in the video that no one had forced him to orchestrate the bombing.
"I wasn't recruited by anybody to do this — I'm doing this of my own free will," he says. "If anything, I was recruited by this country's crimes against humanity."
The video was shot immediately after Nuttall and Korody convinced another undercover officer, who was introduced by the Arab businessman as powerful man from Pakistan, to provide them with C-4 explosive.
Both Korody and Nuttall have pleaded not guilty to four terrorism-related charges.
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