TERRORISM

Terrorism

Terrorism According to UK and International Law

The Legal Definition of Terrorism: European and UK Law

The tragic and painful events in the international arena in the last successive terrorist decade have shown that the legal protections provided at both national and internationally, to combat the terrorist threat, have proved insufficient or inadequate. This is also related to the fact that, at least in international fore, is so far been rather complex to reach a common agreement on the definition of terrorism. When the United Nations was laid for the first time the problem in the 70s, the debate was centred on the need to have the same definition of terrorism. On the one hand there were those who felt that a regulatory response to a pipeline prohibited could not reasonably be offered if there is agreement as to which conduct was actually forbidden. Others believed it was best to proceed pragmatically, as an agreement on the definition probably would never have been found: in those years, indeed, during the cold war, it was difficult to find a common definition of terrorism the two blocks. This was immediately evident to members of the ad hoc committee on terrorism established by the UN general assembly in 1972 (UN, 2010).

There were several proposals regarding the definition of terrorism. It is no accident that the United Nations convention against hostage taking and hijacking against aircraft not there is no mention of political purpose.

In 1937 the League of Nations attempted to define terrorism as: "all criminal acts directed against a state or calculated and intended to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public."

In 1999 the UN intervened with a resolution stating:

Strongly condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomsoever committed;

 reiterates that criminal acts or calculated intended to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or persons for political particular purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, and religious or other nature to justify that may be invoked them.

Finally there is also an academic definition of the term terrorism "terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or were actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of generally chosen violence are randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat-and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used manipulated to the main target (audience (s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or to target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought." (UN, 2010)

With the occurrence of the attacks on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 also other European Nations ...