What is Terrorism?

Terrorism, broadly defined, is a crime or series of crimes intended to strike fear in its victims. The broad definition further breaks down into more than a hundred definitions, most of which agree that a terrorist act not only involves a violent act but also the THREAT of it.

Many countries, including the US, use the United Nations definition that qualifies terrorist acts as those carried out against civilians to serve a certain ideological goal. So if a person threatens to, say, release a deadly chemical into an area’s water supply, that person could be charged, at the very least, with endangering public health and the environment.

But if the person threatens to release the chemical for some political purpose (e.g., US troop pullout from Iraq) then that person can be charged with terrorism. Note that an imminent threat plus an ideological motive must combine to trigger terrorism charges.

A possible exception is quasi terrorism. The quasi terrorist employs terrorist techniques but without the essential factor of an ideological motive. In this case, the felon may be tried under another crime (e.g., hostage taking).

Recent Incidents of Terrorism

Perhaps, the top three most well known terrorist acts of recent times are:

1. 9/11 plane hijacking and crashes in New York and Washington DC in 2001.
2. London train bombings of July 2005.
3. Bali bombings of October 2002 and October 2005.

More recently, there was also the Mumbai train bombings of July 2006.

What about the Virginia Tech shootings? The majority of news reports call it a massacre. That is, the V-Tech incident is generally believed to be an attack by a madman rather than a terrorist. Experts say the incident was caused by shooter Cho Seung-Hui’s mental instability.

But some pundits say things may have been very different if the Korean student had been a Muslim, practiced Islam, and/or had a Muslim-sounding name. Indeed, Cho’s “grudge” statements in the video clips sent to NBC prior to the shootings sounded quite similar to those of Islamic anti-US militants.

Terrorism - Types & Penalties

The types of terrorism under the US criminal justice system, however, have already been in place as early as 1975. The six categories of terrorism are:

1. Civil Disorder - Collective violence against a community
2. Quasi - Terrorist acts incidental to a violent crime but committed for a purpose other than those associated with terrorism (e.g., to extort money)
3. Political - Violent acts that create fear for a political purpose
4. Non-political - Sowing fear as a form of coercion to achieve a purpose (i.e., individual/collective gain) other than a political one
5. Limited Political – Terrorist acts for a political/ideological motive, which isn’t part of a concerted movement to wrest power from the government
6. State – Also called official terrorism, this pertains to states that rule so oppressively that the effects reach terrorist proportions

The universal penalty for an act of terrorism is death. In fact, some countries that previously abolished the death penalty have already reinstated it to specifically address terrorism.

Prior to 9/11, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was already in force, governing how the crime is to be prosecuted in the US. The most famous law governing terrorism is the US Patriot Act of 2001, passed after the events of 9/11.

Since then, several acts have been proposed to limit and/or refine the definition of terrorism, especially as to which acts are eligible for capital punishment. Numerous multilateral agreements governing terrorism have also been signed throughout the world.

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