What Does Criminal Terrorism Mean?

In the meantime, the international community adopted a series of sectoral conventions that define and criminalize various types of terrorist activities. In addition, since 1994, the United Nations General Assembly has condemned terrorist acts using the following political description of terrorism: “Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them” (UN Declarations, 1994).

The history of modern terrorism began with the French revolution and has evolved ever since. The most common causes or roots of terrorism include civilizations or culture clashes, globalization, religion, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. More personal or individual-based reasons for terrorism are frustration, deprivation, negative identity, narcissistic rage, and/or moral disengagement. All these are criminal acts that have redefined our world (EKU, 2018).

The implications of the absence of a universal definition of terrorism for legal purposes are wide-ranging. One is that the lack of a definition may facilitate the politicization and misuse of the term “terrorism” to curb non-terrorist (or sometimes even non-criminal) activities. In turn, this can result in States, e.g., violating the rights of their own or other States’ citizens, such as those of international human rights law, in the course of their counter-terrorism efforts (UNODC, 2018).

Where domestic laws also suffer from ambiguity as to their full reach and meaning in terms of the activities criminalized and the implications thereof, such laws can offend the principle of legality, or nullumcrimen, nullapoena sine lege. This maxim requires that a person should not face criminal trial or punishment under domestic or international criminal law except for an act that was criminalized at the time the act was allegedly committed, meaning that a criminal law cannot be applied retroactively. Of particular interest here, an inherent aspect of this legal principle is that there should be certainty in the law such that the criminalized acts and their accompanying penalties are clearly defined, without doubt or ambiguity, prior to their alleged commission (UNODC, 2018).

You will need to be familiar with the five types of terrorism.

• State-Sponsored terrorism, which consists of terrorist acts on a state or government by a state or government.
• Dissent terrorism, which are terrorist groups which have rebelled against their government.
• Terrorists and the Left and Right, which are groups rooted in political ideology.
• Religious terrorism, which are terrorist groups which are extremely religiously motivated and
• Criminal Terrorism, which are terrorists acts used to aid in crime and criminal profit (EKU, 2018).

Although many regional organizations and nations have given definitions to terrorism but there is a need to define terrorism in international criminal law. Ben Saulhas noted that a “A combination of pragmatic and principled arguments supports the case for defining terrorism in international law”, including the need to condemn violations to human rights, to protect the state and deliberative politics, to differentiate public and private violence, and to ensure international peace and security.

Carlos Diaz-Paniagua, who coordinated the negotiations of the proposed United Nations Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, noted, on his part, the need to provide a precise definition of terrorist activities in international law: “Criminal law has three purposes: to declare that a conduct is forbidden, to prevent it, and to express society’s condemnation for the wrongful acts. The symbolic, normative role of criminalization is of particular importance in the case of terrorism. The criminalization of terrorist acts expresses society’s repugnance at them, invokes social censure and shame, and stigmatizes those who commit them. Moreover, by creating and reaffirming values, criminalization may serve, in the long run, as a deterrent to terrorism, as those values are internalized” (Diaz-Paniagua, 2008).

The definition of the offence in criminal law treaty plays several roles. First and foremost, it has the symbolic, normative role of expressing society’s condemnation of the forbidden acts. Second, it facilitates agreement. Since states tend to be reluctant to undertake stringent obligations in matters related to the exercise of their domestic jurisdiction, a precise definition of the crime, which restricts the scope of those obligations, makes agreement less costly (Diaz-Paniagua, 2008).