The common-law wife of a computer security expert charged in a G20-related case has also been charged in the same investigation.

Kristen Peterson, 37, was arrested after police executed search warrants Wednesday in the Township of Tiny and in the Township of Lake of Bays.

Her husband, Byron Sonne, was arrested after police raided their Toronto home on Tuesday.

Peterson, a visual artist, was charged with possession of an explosive device and possession of a weapon “for a dangerous purpose.”

Peterson was remanded into custody Thursday after her scheduled court appearance, in a special court set up to hear G20-related charges, was put over until Saturday.

Peterson and Sonne live on Elderwood Dr. in Forest Hill, where the 37-year-old Sonne operated his computer security company, Halvdan Solutions.

The couple has been together for at least a decade, Mike Murray, a former boss of Sonne’s, said Thursday.

Peterson referred to Sonne as her husband on art installation biographies and Sonne called her his wife, Murray said. Police described the relationship as common law.

Peterson creates “primarily in installation, creating site-specific drawings on buildings,” one biography said. Her first permanent installation was commissioned by the Toronto Transit Commission for the St. Clair West streetcar line and was to be unveiled this year.

In 2006, she was the resident artist in the Spadina Museum’s Lynn Donoghue Artist in Residence Program run through the city culture program. A long-time Art Gallery of Ontario docent, Peterson used windows and mirrors inside the museum to reveal hidden areas of the building near Casa Loma.

The daughter of a well-to-do Toronto executive, Peterson holds English literature and Master of Visual Studies degrees from the University of Toronto and a fine art diploma from the Toronto School of Art.

Murray, who has known Sonne for seven years, said he would never do anything malicious.

“There’s something fishy to all this. He’s not this kind of person,” Murray said. “Reading all the stuff about explosives — that’s not Byron.

Sonne recently joked he was the last guy counter-terrorism officials would be prone to investigate.

He made the comment about a month ago at a “Surveillance Club” meeting, a monthly gathering for academics and activists who enjoy discussing surveillance issues and ideas.

Sonne shared his plans to protest the G20 and mused he was hardly the type to raise security alarm bells — slightly nerdy with a receding hairline, the computer specialist lives in a million-dollar home with his artist common-law wife. In his spare time, he likes to hang out at HackLab TO, a non-profit group for techies who delight in building everything from LED signs to computer codes.

“He looks, you know, generic. Kind of like a geek,” observed Jesse Hirsh, an Internet specialist and broadcaster who met Sonne at the May 5 meeting. “We sort of joked . . . he was this middle-aged white guy, how he didn’t really fit the (terrorist) profile.”

So Hirsh was shocked to read the headlines Wednesday and discover Sonne is at the centre of a G20 terror investigation.

On Tuesday afternoon, police converged on Sonne and Peterson’s home and arrested him on a slew of charges, the most serious of which is possession of an explosive. He also faces charges of mischief and intimidating a justice system participant.

While Sonne’s family would not respond to interview requests, friends and colleagues say they are baffled by the charges. Police are saying little other than that the charges stem from a G20-related investigation.

Sonne appeared briefly at a bail hearing Wednesday, dressed in a black T-shirt. He agreed to adjourn his hearing until Saturday and lawyer Kevin Tilley requested a publication ban, which was granted.

While Sonne looked tired and occasionally worried, when he walked from the courtroom he appeared to wink at some reporters.

For those who know Sonne, it is this tendency for mischief that may have landed him in hot water. In high school, Sonne reportedly planted a fake bomb that resulted in his school being evacuated, causing classmates to vote him “most likely to become an international terrorist” in their yearbook, according to a former schoolmate.

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Those who now know Sonne say he is a good guy with strong ethics, the farthest thing from a scheming terrorist. With the entire city tense in the lead-up to the G20 summit, Julian Dunn wonders if security officials may have over-reacted to the stunts of an “agent provocateur.”

“He’s not a terrorist or anything like that,” said Dunn, who worked with Sonne in 2003. “If anything, he’s what I would term an agent provocateur. (He likes to) push buttons and challenge the security apparatus.”

At the Surveillance Club meeting, Sonne shared his plans to listen in on police scanners during the summit and disseminate information to protesters via Twitter, according to Hirsh and Andrew Clement, a University of Toronto professor who was also at the meeting.

This was the same tactic used by two protesters at last year’s G20 summit in Pittsburgh, a plan that ultimately led to their arrests. The charges were dropped.

According to Hirsh, Sonne knew his activities could attract unwanted attention from security officials. But at the same time, he did not seem like someone bent on causing mayhem and destruction, Hirsh said.

“He was more critical of the whole circus, as it were,” Hirsh recalled. “I suspect that this may just be a stunt and perhaps a stunt that got out of hand.”

Sonne may have also been deliberately baiting security officials, Hirsh said, and he mentioned wanting to purchase items online that would “trigger counter-terror alarms.”

“It was part of a larger critique or activist exercise to show the absurdity of what’s often referred to as security theatre,” said Hirsh, who didn’t know what items Sonne planned to buy.

Sonne’s Twitter account also likely placed him on the radar, as G20 security has been actively monitoring social media. His recent tweets link to photos and videos of the security fence, as well as a G20 counter-surveillance “how to” guide he created and posted on a file-sharing website.

Sonne’s tweets suggest he has already been listening in on police communications with a radio scanner, a practice that is legal and used by many news outlets to stay abreast of breaking news. According to Twitter, he has also had two run-ins with G20 police prior to his Tuesday arrest.

“Some people must be stupid; I’ve never been arrested or forced to delete pictures of cops and I’ve been stopped 2 times now #g20report” he tweeted on Monday.

His last Twitter update was at 11:10 a.m. Tuesday.

While HackLab TO wouldn’t respond to interview requests, it released a statement on its website confirming one of its members had been arrested.

“Byron is innocent until proven guilty, and as a member of the lab and a friend we are concerned for him,” the statement read.

Colleagues say Sonne is well-respected in his field of computer security and has previously worked for top companies such as nCircle Network Security and FSC Internet Corp.