... but the judge criticized the law enforcement agents who helped push the plot forward: “The government made them terrorists.”

Entrapment is a tricky thing. 

It's one thing where the police discover a plot and follow it along. But if the police hatch the plot and convince someone to join in?

In Canada entrapment occurs when the police actually induce the commission of the offence. Some factors a court may consider when deciding whether police have induced the offence include the type of crime being investigated, whether an average person would have been induced, the persistence and number of attempts made by the police, the type of inducement used (e.g. fraud, deceit, reward), and the existence of express or implied threats.

As the Supreme Court of Canada noted in R v Mack [1988] 2 S.C.R. 903:

"19.                     There is a crucial distinction, one which is not easy to draw, however, between the police or their agents‑‑acting on reasonable suspicion or in the course of a bona fide inquiry‑‑providing an opportunity to a person to commit a crime, and the state actually creating a crime for the purpose of prosecution. The former is completely acceptable as is police conduct that is directed only at obtaining evidence of an offence when committed (see Amato, supra, per Estey J., at p. 446). The concern is rather with law enforcement techniques that involve conduct that the citizenry cannot tolerate. In many cases the particular facts may constitute a classic example of what may be referred to as "entrapment" which has been described by an American judge as "the conception and planning of an offense by an officer, and his procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion, or fraud of the officer" (Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435 (1932), at p. 454, per Roberts J., cited by Dickson C.J. in Jewitt, supra, at p. 145)."

What happened here?  I guess we'll have to wait and see and hope it comes out in Court:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/nyregion/arrest-in-plot-to-blow-up-federal-reserve-bank.html?_r=1

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man with conspiring to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, saying he tried to remotely detonate what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb in a van he parked outside the building in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday.

But the entire plot played out under the surveillance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department as part of an elaborate sting operation, according to court papers.

• DOCUMENT: Criminal Complaint in Federal Reserve Bank Bombing Attempt

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Follow us on Twitterand like us on Facebookfor news and conversation.But the entire plot played out under the surveillance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department as part of an elaborate sting operation, according to court papers.