John Nuttall, Amanda Korody self-describe as 'al-Qaeda Canada'

With less than a week until Canada Day, John Nuttall and his wife, Amanda Korody, found themselves alone in a motel room near Vancouver, watching television and discussing their alleged plan to bomb the British Columbia legislature on the national holiday.

They had spent the afternoon of June 26, 2013, shopping for bomb-making materials such as pressure cookers, their terrorism trial has heard, and they planned to build the devices the following day. The fruits of their shopping trip were strewn about their suite at the Sundance Motel.

Nuttall flipped through television channels until he landed on CNN, prompting him to imagine how television news would cover their planned attack.

"We're going to be looking on the news and see the aftermath," Nuttall tells Korody in a video played for the jury Wednesday

"This is gonna rock the world. The whole world is going to hear about this. You know that, right?"

Nuttall and Korody had become the targets of an undercover RCMP investigation that began months earlier, when an officer posing as an Arab businessman befriended the couple and offered to help them execute their plan.

The Crown has already presented hours of video showing the pair interacting with the officer, but the motel video marked the first time the jury saw Nuttall and Korody alone for any length of time.

"We are now proclaiming we are al-Qaeda," Nuttall says in the video.

"We're AQ Canada, al-Qaeda Canada, that's who we are.… We're sleepers who've been woken."

Crown theory: Accused were self-radicalized

The Crown's theory is that Nuttall and Korody were self-radicalized and were not part of a larger terrorist group.

The Crown has said the couple planned the attack to avenge what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims abroad, and the videos have featured numerous instances in which Nuttall complains about Canadian military involvement in Arab countries.

In a separate video recorded in the officer's truck on June 27, Nuttall describes a troubled childhood.

He says his father and stepmother physically abused him. He says they beat him and locked him in a room for a week at a time, forcing him to write out the Bible by hand.

"I hope my parents are there at the bombing -- at the [Canada Day] fireworks," says Nuttall.

"I hope they die, my father and my stepmonster."

The Crown has said the couple were recent converts. In the video Nuttall says, "We didn't have Islam until like a year and a half ago."

Nuttall describes a Christian upbringing, but says he doubted the religion as far back as Sunday school.

"Because of all this confusion and the trouble I had with my parents, I rebelled," says Nuttall. 

"I misunderstood God. I knew he was there, but I still basically spat in his face because he wasn't there for me and I was angry at him.… But then when you really truly open your eyes, you realize Allah is also here, he's everywhere. When I read the Qur'an, it purified my soul."

Nuttall and Korody have both pleaded not guilty.