Llobet Anglí, Mariona --- "What does ‘terrorism’ mean?" [2013] ELECD 1030; in Masferrer, Aniceto; Walker, Clive (eds), "Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights and the Rule of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 17

Book Title: Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Editor(s): Masferrer, Aniceto; Walker, Clive

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781954461

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: What does ‘terrorism’ mean?

Author(s): Llobet Anglí, Mariona

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

Nowadays almost everyone, everywhere, feels free to talk about ‘terror- ism’. Expressions like ‘domestic terrorism’, ‘ecological terrorism’, ‘forest terrorism’ or ‘traffic terrorism’ have been coined by politicians, public opinion and in academia in recent times. Within the mass media, the term ‘terrorism’ appears every day in news or opinion articles of many occidental newspapers. The trend has also infiltrated the legal practices of different European countries. They have considered as acts of terrorism a range of activities, including common forms of criminal damage to property, arson or breaches of the peace. For example, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) and the German General Attorney Office (Bundesanwaltschaft), in 2007, labelled as ‘terrorist’ the group Militante Gruppe (MG), though it only committed arson attacks that did not put in peril the life of any person. In like manner, the Terrorism and Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office in Greece decided to initiate investigations in order to clarify whether the arson attacks that devastated Greece in August 2007 could be considered as acts of terrorism. By the same token, Spanish criminal courts have punished as terrorism some public disorders merely because of their capacity for disturbing security on the streets. Moreover, the term, ‘terrorism’, has historically been used to name distinct phenomena in different time periods, and terrorist methods are employed in many scenarios. Thus, terrorism as a method, that is, the resort to violent acts capable of filling people with terror, appears together with other forms of political violence.