Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on November 30, 2006
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2006 4(5):912-932; doi:10.1093/jicj/mql063
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I. Responding to Terrorism: The Quest for a Legal Definition |
The Universal Terrorist
The International Community Grappling with a Definition
* Professor of Criminal Law, University of Cologne, Germany. The author wishes to thank Ms Swetlana Niekisch for her research support. [ Thomas.Weigend{at}uni-koeln.de]
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Abstract |
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Steps have been taken on the international level towards determining a widely acceptable definition of terrorism as a basis for international conventions. One basic distinction in this context is between state-sponsored ‘official’ terrorism and individual terrorism directed against those in power. With respect to ‘individual’ terrorism, a widely accepted definition refers to acts or threats of violence committed with the intention to intimidate a population in furtherance of some non-economic goal. The old problem of distinguishing terrorists from legitimate freedom fighters has been alleviated but not yet totally resolved. Another issue concerns the question of whether to exempt actions of and/or directed against armed forces from the definition of terrorism. Overbreadth rather than vagueness is a problem of many current definitions of terrorism: since they include as ‘base offences’ less serious violations of individual or communal interests and even the mere intention or threat to commit them, they fail to reserve the stigma of terrorism to those offences that truly threaten the social fabric.