Skip to main content

Responding to Terrorism: Definition and Other Actions

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Nigerian Yearbook of International Law 2017

Part of the book series: Nigerian Yearbook of International Law ((NYBIL,volume 2017))

Abstract

Terrorism, which has created agony for the people of Nigeria, is a global affliction. To date, there has been a general failure to recognise it as a crime at international law. But that needs to change urgently. As has been recognised by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, in a decision declining strikeout of a claim against the British government for alleged implication in extraordinary rendition, detention and torture, from which an appeal was dismissed:

… a fundamental change has occurred within public international law. The traditional view of public international law as a system of law merely regulating the conduct of states among themselves on the international plane has long been discarded. In its place has emerged a system which includes the regulation of human rights by international law, a system of which individuals are rightly considered to be subjects. A corresponding shift in international public policy has also taken place.

KNZM, QC, Appellate Judge and former President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Leidschendam, Netherlands. This paper draws on previous extrajudicial visits to this topic: David Baragwanath, ‘Liberty and Justice in the Face of Terrorist Threats to Society (2011) 19 Waikato Law Review 61; ‘Work in Progress at the First Tribunal Charged with Terrorist Jurisdiction’ (2014c) 22 Waikato Law Review 41; ‘Terrorism as a Legal Concept’ (Second Annual Ashgate Lecture on Criminal Law), Centre for Evidence and Criminal Studies, Northumbria Law School, Newcastle 27 November 2014b; ‘The Security Council’s Jurisdiction Under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations and Its Relationship with the Judiciary’ School of Political Science and International Relations, Tongji University, Shanghai 3 April 2015a; ‘Defining Terrorism Under International and Domestic Law’ Lecture T.M.V. Asser Centre, The Hague 24 August 2015b and that cited in n 3.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Belhaj v Straw [2014] EWCA Civ 1394, 115, [2015] 2 WLR 1105; on appeal [2017] UKSC 3, [2017] 2 WLR 456.

  2. 2.

    David Baragwanath, ‘Liberty and Justice in the Face of Terrorist Threats to Society (2011) 19 Waikato Law Review 61.

  3. 3.

    David Baragwanath, ‘The Role of the Hague Institutions in Promoting International Justice’ University of Waikato, New Zealand 23 September 2015 in a forthcoming edition of the Waikato Law Review.

  4. 4.

    Fifth Annual Report of Special Tribunal for Lebanon (2013-2014) p 44 adopting an idea of Antonio Cassese.

  5. 5.

    STL AC The Prosecutor v. Ayyash and others, Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law: Terrorism et al, 16 February 2011, STL Casebook 2011, 27.

  6. 6.

    The 1937 International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism was adopted under the auspices of the League of Nations, but never implemented: Ben Saul, Defining Terrorism in International Law (Oxford 2006) xxiii.

  7. 7.

    Alex P Schmid (ed) (Routledge 2013).

  8. 8.

    Anthony Richards, ‘Conceptualising Terrorism’ (2014) 37 Studies In Conflict and Terrorism 213, 226.

  9. 9.

    Appointed under the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act 2010.

  10. 10.

    <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5flzfOabMNw&feature=youtu.be&t=7h31m05s> accessed 16 May 2016.

  11. 11.

    Such ‘give it up’ approach could be supported by adopting the idea, noted by Franciso Bethencourt, of pluralizing the term: Racisms from the crusades to the twentieth century (Princeton 2014).

  12. 12.

    « Le mot manquait, le mot pour définir un homme qui réduisait le corps d’un autre en charpie. Le terme tueur était insuffisant et dérisoire » Un Lieu incertain (Viviane Hamy 2008) 49, cited in Gilles Ferragu, Histoire du Terrorisme (Perrin 2014).

  13. 13.

    Neil Boister, An Introduction to Transnational Criminal Law (Oxford 2012) 62.

  14. 14.

    A topic which English law has found difficult: compare R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38, [2015] 1 AC 657 (the Supreme Court’s tentative view that in narrowly defined circumstances the law might permit assisted suicide) and the later rejection by the House of Commons 330 to 118 of a bill to introduce a right to die; Gallagher J and Roxby P, ‘Assisted Dying Bill: MPs reject “”right to die” law’ (BBC News, 11 September 2015) <http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34208624> accessed 16 May 2016.

  15. 15.

    Ferragu (n 12) 8 … malgré la profondeur de leurs analyses, juristes, politologues et journalistes aboutissent à un constat sans appel : la difficulté, voire l’impossibilité de donner au phénomène structurante et consensuelle. [les contours du] terme demeurent flous, … à la fois sémantiques, juridiques et stratégiques …

  16. 16.

    Rosalyn Higgins and Maurice Florey (eds), ‘The general international law of terrorism’ in Terrorism and International Law (Routledge 2003) 28.

  17. 17.

    Saul (n 6) 8.

  18. 18.

    [2012] EWCA Crim 280, [2012] 1 WLR 3432.

  19. 19.

    R v Gul [2013] UKSC 64, [2013] 3 WLR 1207, [2014] 1 Cr App R 315 following its earlier decision in Al-Sirri v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] UKSC 54, [2013] 1 AC 745, at [37] that ‘there is as yet no internationally agreed definition of terrorism’.

  20. 20.

    B Saul, (ed) Terrorism (Hart Publishing Oxford and Portland 2012) lxvii n10 the issue is ‘deeply contested’; pp lxx-lxxiii challenging specific aspects of the AC decision.

  21. 21.

    Kirsten J Fisher, Moral Accountability and International Criminal Law: Holding Agents of Atrocity Accountable to the World (Routledge 2012).

  22. 22.

    ibid 8-9.

  23. 23.

    ibid 98.

  24. 24.

    ibid 30.

  25. 25.

    ibid 46.

  26. 26.

    ibid 43.

  27. 27.

    ibid 41.

  28. 28.

    Noemi Gal-Or, ‘The Formation of a Customary International Crime: Global Terrorism Human (In) Security’ (2015) 4 International Criminal Law Review 665.

  29. 29.

    ibid 666.

  30. 30.

    ibid 669.

  31. 31.

    ibid 686 and 669 (citing Interlocutory Decision (n 5) para 85) and n 109.

  32. 32.

    François Viangalli, Qu’est-ce que le terrorisme ? Éthologie de l’horreur et sanction Les éclaireurs du pénal (L’Harmattan 2012) 240-1.

  33. 33.

    Julie Alix, Terrorism et droit penal (Dalloz 2013) 2.

  34. 34.

    Oxford English Dictionary.

  35. 35.

    Saul (n 17).

  36. 36.

    ibid 1-2.

  37. 37.

    ibid 272.

  38. 38.

    ibid 2.

  39. 39.

    ibid.

  40. 40.

    He records at p3 the:

    ‘shifting and contested meanings of ‘terrorism’ over time’ and ‘the peculiar semantic power of the term, beyond its literal signification [the] capacity to stigmatize, … denigrate, and dehumanize those at whom it is directed, including legitimate political opponents. The term is ideologically and politically loaded; pejorative; implies moral, social, and value judgment; and is ‘slippery and much-abused’. In the absence of a definition of terrorism, the struggle over the representation of a violent act is a struggle over its legitimacy. The more confused a concept, the more it lends itself to opportunistic appropriation.

    The term … has been erratically employed to describe all manner of evils, such as the nuclear ‘balance of terror’; rape by ‘sex terrorists’; and the Spanish inquisition. It has also been used to describe things that are not evils at all: refugees in Sabra and Shatilla; loggers who caused flooding in Sumatra; and even parliamentary colleagues who sought to release asylum seekers from detention.’

  41. 41.

    Richards (n 8) 215.

  42. 42.

    ibid 231.

  43. 43.

    < http://www.unhcr.org/4486ceb12.html> accessed 16 May 2016.

  44. 44.

    <http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html> accessed 16 May 2016.

  45. 45.

    <http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e484f76.html> accessed 16 May 2016.

  46. 46.

    <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=52069#> accessed 16 May 2016.

  47. 47.

    7 Coke’s Reports 1a, 77 English Reports 377.

  48. 48.

    Baragwanath (n 2).

  49. 49.

    AG Guest, ‘The Concept of Possession in English Law’ in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (eds) (Oxford 1961) 69 -70.

  50. 50.

    Donald Harris, ‘Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence’ (1954) 70 LQR 37.

  51. 51.

    Yidir Plantade, ‘Guerres en mouvement’ Le Monde 23 October 2014, 13 reviewing Nouvelles guerres. L’état du monde 2015 Ouvrage collectif sous la direction de Bertrand Badie et Dominique Vidal (La Découverte 2014).

  52. 52.

    Cherif M. Bassiouni, ‘Characteristics of International Criminal Law Conventions’ in 1 International Criminal Law: Crimes 1, (Bassiouni ed 1986); Erin Creegan, ‘A Permanent Hybrid Court for Terrorism’ (2011) American University International Law Review 26, 237, 245.

  53. 53.

    See recently UNSC Resolution 2178 (24 September 2014).

  54. 54.

    [1985] UKHL 4, [1985] AC 809.

  55. 55.

    [1995] UKPC 5, [1995] 2 AC 500 at 506.

  56. 56.

    Baragwanath (n 3).

  57. 57.

    Domestic courts have become increasingly confident in using legislative policy as a guide to developing the judge-made law. See Roger J. Traynor, ‘Statutes Revolving in Common-Law Orbits’ The Traynor Reader (1968) 17 Catholic University Law Review 401. Given the status of the Security Council, it is inevitable that international judge-made law will place weight on its approach.

  58. 58.

    Stephen Sedley, Ashes and Sparks (Cambridge 2011) chapter 20.

  59. 59.

    Aesop’s fable; the young mouse’s suggestion of how to deal with the surreptitious approach of their feline enemy and the old mouse’s response ‘but who is to do it?’

  60. 60.

    Interlocutory Decision (n 5).

  61. 61.

    Article 314 of the Lebanon Criminal Code states:

    Terrorist acts are all acts intended to cause a state of terror and committed by means liable to create a public danger such as explosive devices, inflammable materials, toxic or corrosive products or microbial agents.

  62. 62.

    Saul (n 20) lxx-lxxii.

  63. 63.

    UNGAS Resolution 49/60 (9 December 1994).

  64. 64.

    Andreas Bianchi, Enforcing International Law Norms Against Terrorism (1st edn Hart Publishing 2004) 227, 272.

  65. 65.

    Bassiouni (n 52) 243-3.

  66. 66.

    Antonio Cassese, ‘Terrorism is also disrupting some crucial legal categories of International Law’, (2001) 12 European Journal of International Law 993, 994.

  67. 67.

    1954 Draft Code of Offences against the Peace and Security of Mankind, 1991 Draft Code, 1996 Draft Code discussed by Ben Saul in The University of Sydney, Sydney Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08/115 October 2008 Attempts to Define ‘Terrorism’ in International Law <http://ssrn.com/abstract=1277583> accessed 16 May 2016.

  68. 68.

    Creegan (n 52) 253.

  69. 69.

    David Baragwanath ‘Interpretive Challenges of International Adjudication across the Common Law/Civil Law Divide’ (2014a) 3 Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law 450.

  70. 70.

    Interlocutory Decision (n 5) para 23. See also Julius Stone, ‘Non liquet and the Function of Law in the International Community’ (1959) 35 BYIL 124.

  71. 71.

    Baragwanath (n 70).

  72. 72.

    When asked about heaven, and who made her, she answered ‘Nobody as I knows on […] I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me’, Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin, vol II chapter XX, reproduced in E. Ammons, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (eds), (2nd edn Norton 2010) 221.

  73. 73.

    STL AC In the Matter of El Sayed, Jurisdiction and Standing, 10 November 2010, STL Casebook 2009-2010, 139 at 153-163 paras 38-57.

  74. 74.

    STL AC Decision on Partial Appeal by Mr El Sayed,19 July 2011, STL Casebook 2011, 317 at 338-353 paras 33-68.

  75. 75.

    The Administrative Law Bar Association Annual Lecture ‘Anxious Scrutiny’ 4 November 2014 < https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-141104.pdf / > accessed 16 May 2016.

  76. 76.

    [2014] UKPC 36 10 November 2014, [2015] 2 WLR 971 in which Lord Neuberger wrote:

    161. The contention that judges should not be creating the power is reinforced when one considers the extent of domestic statutory law and international convention law in the area of international insolvency… In this highly legislated area, I consider that the power which is said to arise in this case is one which should be bestowed on the court by the legislature, and not arrogated to the court of its own motion.

  77. 77.

    Baragwanath (n 70).

  78. 78.

    H. Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace (1625), Book 1 Chapter 1.

  79. 79.

    ibid.

  80. 80.

    ibid.

  81. 81.

    M. T. Cicero, De Legibus (On the Laws), Book I, Chapter XV (translation by C.D. Yonge).

  82. 82.

    Consider Paul Vinogradoff, Common-sense in Law (1914) (The Lawbook Exchange Ltd 2006) 147

    …legislation as a source of law is inseparable from a process of interpretation by the Courts, which in itself amounts to a subordinate source of law. It is impossible to curtail the freedom of judges in analyzing cases and applying general rules in ways not indicated in the rule and not premeditated by the legislators. Thus in the simplest and most emphatic expression of the law-making power of societies, we find that another factor asserts itself by the side of that of deliberate prospective commands, namely, the force of public opinion and of professional opinion as manifested in the action of judges. They are undoubtedly persons in authority, but their voice has a decisive weight in such questions not merely on account of this external authority, by chiefly by reason of the necessities imposed by logic, by moral and by practical considerations.

  83. 83.

    Cited by Professor Norbert Rouland in « Autonome et autochtonie dans la Zone Pacifique Sud : Une Approche Juridique et Historique » Polynesie Française, 30 Ans d’autonomie Bilan et Perspectives Acts du Colloque organisé par l’Assemblée de la Polynesie Française (eds Anthony Angelo – Yves-Louis Sage) 50 < http://www.assemblee.pf/_documents/_acces_special/Actes%20du%20colloque%20-%20Journal%20du%20droit%20compar%C3%A9%20du%20Pacifique%20%E2%80%93%20Collection%20%C2%AB%20Ex%20professo%20%C2%BB%20-%20Volume%20IV%20(2014).pdf> accessed 16 May 2016.

  84. 84.

    Michel de Montaigne The Complete Essays (trs MA Screech Penguin 2003) 138. The topic is developed in Baragwanath, ‘Interpretive Challenges’ (n 70): especially at 460-1.

  85. 85.

    Jeremy Bentham, ‘Theory of Legislation’ (Etienne Dumont edition translated and edited by CM Atkinson 1914) at 62.

  86. 86.

    In re W (an infant) [1971] AC 682, 700.

  87. 87.

    G Canivet, Audience solennelle du 6 janvier 2006 – Discours de Guy Canivet, Premier président de la Cour de cassation (Paris, 8 January 2006). <http://www.courdecassation.fr/IMG/File/pdf_2006/audience_solennelle_2006_discours_pp.pdf> accessed 16 May 2016.

  88. 88.

    Consider Professor Campbell McLachlan’s argument to that effect in Lis pendens in International Litigation (Hague Academy of International Law, Martinus Nijhof 2009).

  89. 89.

    ‘Towards Making Peace Permanent’ Nobel Lectures Peace 1901-1925 (1912) 247, 258 (World Scientific Publications Co Pte Ltd for the Nobel Foundation 1999).

  90. 90.

    Ahmadou Sadio Diallo (Republic of Guinea v Democratic Republic of the Congo) (Compensation owed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Republic of Guinea) ICJ Judgment 19 June 2012, Declaration of Judge Greenwood para 8, cited by Sir Michael Wood Special Rapporteur First Report on formation and evidence of customary international law International Law Commission 17 May 2013 (A/CN.4/663) at para 19.

  91. 91.

    Boister (n 13) 63.

  92. 92.

    ibid.

  93. 93.

    ibid.

  94. 94.

    UK Supreme Court website https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-141009-lord-neuberger.pdf > accessed 16 May 2016.

  95. 95.

    The fact that in Nicklinson (n 14) the House of Commons rejected the Supreme Court’s tentative view (that in narrowly defined circumstances the law might permit assisted suicide) emphasizes why judges must avoid intruding upon issues of political controversy where they lack such practical competence.

  96. 96.

    Lord Bingham, The Rule of Law (Allen Lane 2010).

  97. 97.

    ‘Closed Material’ London Review of Books, Vol 36 No 38, 17 April 2014, 29.

  98. 98.

    A (FC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 56, [2005] 2 AC 68.

  99. 99.

    FACC No 6 of 2009, decided 28 January 2009.

  100. 100.

    See to similar effect Standard 304 Ltd v R [2008] NZCA 76 interpreting legislation protecting the public from drugs manufactured in New Zealand as applying to export sales. The current high water mark may be National Commissioner of the South African Police Service v Southern African Human Rights Litigation Centre Case CCT 02/14, 30 October 2014 where a duty of investigation in absentia was held to rest upon a State which had no current jurisdiction to try any consequential proceedings without the accused coming on to its own soil.

  101. 101.

    No man is an island,

    Entire of itself,

    Any man's death diminishes me,

    Because I am involved in mankind,

    And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

    It tolls for thee.

    Meditation XVII Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

  102. 102.

    I refer to the developing notion that each should seek to respect, learn from and work with the other in the common interest of the community. See JF Burrows and RI Carter, Statute Law in New Zealand (4th edn LexisNexis 2009) chapter 16 ‘Common law and statute’.

  103. 103.

    [2000] UKHL 67 at p12, [2001] 2 AC 477.

  104. 104.

    Richards (n 8).

  105. 105.

    Which permits veto by each permanent member.

  106. 106.

    See Chile Eboe-Osuji, ‘Another Look at the Intent Element for the War Crime of Terrorism’ (2011) 24 Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 357.

  107. 107.

    United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, discussed in ‘Liberty and Justice in the Face of Terrorist Threats to Society (2011) (n1) 76-7.

  108. 108.

    Baragwanath (n 2).

  109. 109.

    ‘2014 Global Terrorism Index’ (Institute for Economics and Peace) <http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Global-Terrorism-Index-Report-2014.pdf> assessed 16 May 2016.

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Baragwanath .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Baragwanath, D. (2018). Responding to Terrorism: Definition and Other Actions. In: Eboe-Osuji, C., Emeseh, E. (eds) Nigerian Yearbook of International Law 2017. Nigerian Yearbook of International Law , vol 2017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71476-9_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71476-9_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71475-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71476-9

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics