Terrorism

Law and Policy

David Lowe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138655317, 9781138655300
• eBook ISBN: 9781317219033
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Derecho público

Terrorism: Law and Policy provides a comprehensive socio-legal analysis of issues related to terrorist activity. Aimed at both undergraduate and postgraduate students, the book takes a comparative approach to the law related to terrorism in a number of states, mainly those in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Beginning with an examination of the background to various currently active terrorist groups, the book focuses on those groups which are currently active and which pose a threat to security, especially at the international level. The chapters take the reader through the legal definitions of terrorism contained in various states' statutory provisions and examine how the courts have interpreted terrorism in those states' jurisdictions. The main aim of any terrorist investigation is prevention and so the book examines the various statutory preventative measures that states have introduced and explores the legal issues surrounding surveillance, terrorism intelligence exchange, radicalisation, use of social media, quasi-criminal provisions, asset-freezing and the nexus between terrorist activity and organised crime.

Bringing together a number of themes related to terrorism and security from a uniquely legal perspective, this book builds a comparative picture of the legal counter-terrorism interventions states are adopting to increase co-operation and adopt a more united approach in the face of the international terrorism threat.

Chapter 1
The terrorist threat facing the states covered in this study

Topics covered in this chapter:

1. Whether there is a difference between old and new terrorism;
2. Overview of Al Qaeda;
3. Overview of al-Shabaab;
4. Overview of Islamic State;
5. Case study – Islamic State in Russia;
6. Overview of Boko Haram;
7. Overview of the New IRA.

At the end of this chapter you will:

1. Understand how and why Al Qaeda were formed and what the group’s cause is;
2. Understand how and why Al Shabaab were formed and what the group’s cause is;
3. Understand how and why Islamic State (Daesh) was formed and what the group’s cause is;
4. Be able to assess how and why Islamist groups pose a threat to states’ security;
5. Understand how and why Boko Haram was formed and what the group’s cause is;
6. Understand how and why the New IRA was formed and what the group’s cause is.

Introduction

With the number of terrorist and political violent conflicts currently ongoing in the world, it would be too large a task to cover all of them in this chapter. As the focus of this book examines terrorism law and policy in Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU), the UK and the US, this chapter covers the main terrorist threats facing those states. The chapter starts by looking at the impact Al Qaeda’s attack on the US in September 2001 (more commonly known as 9/11) had on people’s psyche and assesses whether there is a new and old terrorism, or if what we are witnessing is simply terrorism carried out in the name of different causes with different tactics being deployed. With these factors in mind, the main aim of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of how certain groups operate, from which to derive a basic understanding of how and why those groups came about and what factors have been influential in determining the cause in the name of which they act.

As one of the main threats facing many states around the world comes from Islamist groups, while acknowledging there are many such groups, for example Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, this chapter covers the main Islamist groups that pose such a threat including Al Qaeda, Islamic State (IS) and Al Shabaab. Although it does not pose a direct threat to states outside Nigeria, the Nigerian group Boko Haram is also covered. As Boko Haram appears to follow an Islamist ideology, this group is included in the examination to draw a comparison with other Islamist groups to ascertain if there are any differences between the cause Boko Haram is fighting for and theirs. As Al Qaeda has carried out or inspired terrorist attacks at a global level, this chapter looks at what factors were influential in the formation of the group and what the group’s cause and aim of their actions are. Following the death of its former leader, Osama bin Laden in 2011, the chapter examines whether Al Qaeda is still a potent threat to states’ security. This leads to an examination of how and why Al Qaeda appears to have broken up into a number of related groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. However, these groups come under Al Qaeda’s central command. Another group that does not bear an Al Qaeda name but which has pledged allegiance to it is also discussed, Al Shabaab in Somalia. Al Shabaab is included because it has carried out attacks not only in Somalia but also in African states bordering Somalia, and it has attracted many citizens, mainly from the UK and the US, to join the group as foreign fighters.

Over the past few years the one Islamist group that has been prominent is IS. Not only has IS seized and occupied territory where it has proclaimed a caliphate, but it has also carried out many attacks by its trained operatives. Furthermore, it has inspired individuals who have never travelled to an IS caliphate or had any direct communication with the group to carry out attacks in their name. This chapter examines how IS was formed and its clashes with Al Qaeda. As IS is rapidly losing control of its territory and its cells in Australia, Europe and North America are being degraded, the chapter examines whether IS and other Islamist groups still pose a threat to states’ security. This includes a case study of how IS is operating in Russia and the threat it poses in the Caucasus states’ region where it is exerting influence. This is significant as some of these predominantly Muslim-populated states have been fighting to gain independence from central Russian government control and IS has taken advantage of this situation to recruit these fighters to their cause. The section on Islamist groups concludes by considering the Nigerian group Boko Haram, which follows an Islamist ideology, with an examination of whether the cause underpinning its actions is an Islamist or political cause.

The chapter concludes with a study of a terrorist group that has pursued a long-standing political cause, the New Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland. The various formations of the IRA were selected for this study as the state that has to deal with this terrorist threat, the UK, is among the states that are the main focus of this book. The study covers a historical overview of Anglo-Irish relations to provide a context in which to understand the political cause that has driven the various forms of the IRA for over a hundred years. Currently, the terror threat level from dissident Irish republican groups is severe in Northern Ireland and substantial in Britain. This section of the chapter examines the actions the New IRA carry out, its political support and whether there is any support for the group in Britain as the Provisional IRA had during the 1968–1997 Irish Troubles.

Terrorism: it is not a new phenomenon brought about by Al Qaeda in 2001

The impact of 9/11 on people’s psyche

Terrorism has become an increasingly popular area of research and academic study mainly due to governmental responses following the Islamist group Al Qaeda’s attack on the US in September 2001 (commonly referred to as 9/11), which Manning observes exemplifies how politics and political interest shapes research.¹ The reason why terrorism has become such a popular topic in recent academic work is quite understandable, as Manning points out the Al Qaeda attack made a distant spectral reality a closer and more threatening idea:

The imagery of terror is media created, since few people actually saw people leaping to their death or the collapse of the Towers. Yet it seems real, and is part of a political spectacle.… While the powerful and immediate imagery of the Twin Towers being hit, the people fleeing, others jumping to certain death from buildings, the exhausted fire-fighters and the Twin Lights monument opened in New York in March 2002 all suggest that what we saw was a reality, a palpable natural event…²

It was a live event that was witnessed by millions around the world on their television screens, and once the second aircraft flew into the World Trade Center’s towers, the horror of a terrorist attack became a reality in the minds of those watching. As the planning, sophistication and sheer effrontery of the attack unfolded, there was an immediate terror effect that this could happen with persons hijacking aircraft and flying them into targets. Added to this was the shock that this was the first attack on the US mainland by a foreign national since the British in 1814, when they burnt down the White House.³ On this occasion, Bodansky states, Al Qaeda destroyed an equally important symbol of the US, the twin tower blocks of the World Trade Center,⁴ the Pentagon,⁵ and one wonders whether Al Qaeda would have emulated the British in 1814 with the United Airline Flight 93 by destroying the White House – we will never know, but it is believed that was the target of that aircraft. Since the 9/11 attacks we have witnessed many other Islamist-based attacks around the world which have included Al Qaeda-inspired attacks in Bali 2002 that killed 202 people from 21 countries including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians and 28 Britons,⁶ the 2004 Madrid bombing, killing 191 and injuring up to 1,800 people,⁷ and the 2005 London bombing, killing 52 and injuring over 700 people.⁸ With both the breadth of countries attacked and the high casualty rates, it is understandable that there is the perception that terrorism is a recent twenty-first-century phenomenon.

Origins of terrorism and examples of conflicts pre-9/11

Studies have revealed that terrorist campaigns have been carried out for over 150 years. The term ‘terrorism’ can be traced to the French Revolution period of 1793–1794 where in a French dictionary the term was used in a positive sense regarding the state’s systematic reign of terror. By the early nineteenth century the term ‘terrorism’ began to have criminal connotations.⁹ Laqueur traces acts of terrorism back to 1880 with the Russian Narodnaya Volya group which was formed in 1878 and fought against the Tsarist regime that it saw as tyrannical in its brutal treatment of the masses in Russia¹⁰ and the Irish Fenian movement in 1880 whose aim was to end the British rule in Ireland.¹¹

It was, of course, the Fenian movement that brought about the formation of the first policing department solely dedicated to countering a terrorist threat, the Special Branch in England in 1883, whose remit was to combat the Fenian bombings in London. Originally called the Special Irish Branch, in 1888 the word ‘Irish’ was dropped as the department’s role had developed and it was clear Special Branch’s role was not limited to Irish insurgency.¹² Arguably, one could go back even further to 1800–1812 with the social and political conflict arising from the Luddites in England, who destroyed factories, seeing them as places of exploitation that reduced the artisan to a dependent state. They were protecting their way of life as well as their own independent livelihood as the machines in the factories were a means of oppression on the part of the rich and of corresponding degradation and misery for the poor.¹³ It can be argued that the UK took advantage of the terrorist tactics of guerrilla warfare in the Peninsula Wars 1809–1813, where the Com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Table of statutes
• Table of cases
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The terrorist threat facing the states covered in this study
• 2 The legal definition of terrorism
• 3 Government policies and statutory preventative measures
• 4 Surveillance of electronic communications
• 5 International terrorism intelligence exchange, Snowden revelations, the courts and data protection
• 6 Handling informants in terrorist investigations
• 7 Funding terrorism and asset-freezing
• 8 Prevent strategies
• Bibliography
• Index