TERRORISM

Subject: Criminology

JULY 12, 2019

Submitted By: AREEJ FATIMA
Submitted To: ADV. MIAN ALI HAIDER
 “Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against person or Property to intimidate or
coerce o government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or
social objectives.” 1
“Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent
people are targeted.” 2
The current wave of terrorism is believed to have started in 2000. The current wave of terrorism
peaked during 2009. Since then it has drastically declined as result of military operations
conducted by Pakistan Army. 3
One of the major incidence of terrorism was 9/11 attack. On September 11, 2001, 19 militants
associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried
out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into
the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon
just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major
U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defined the presidency of George W. Bush. 4
After 9/11 various anti-terrorism laws have been made.
Loosely defined, terrorism is the use of violence with the aim of furthering a political or ideological
goal at the expense of the general population. Terrorism can take many forms and has many causes,
often more than one. It can have its roots in religious, social, or political conflicts, often when one
community is oppressed by another. 5
ELEMENTS OF THE CRIME OF TERRORISM are:
 The perpetration of violence by whatever means;
 The targeting of innocent civilians;
 With the intent to cause violence or with wanton disregard for its consequences;
 For the purpose of causing fear, coercing or intimidating an enemy;
 In order to achieve some political, military, ethnic, ideological, or religious goal. 6
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1. F.B.I Definition
2. - Walter Laqueur
3. "Terrorism in Pakistan decline by 89% in 8 years". ProPakistani. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
4. https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks
5. Amy Zalman, Ph.D
6. These basic five elements are a variation of Blakesley's elements. BLAKELSEY, supra note 6, at 37.
Blakesley's five elements include "conducting the above acts without justification or excuse" and do not
include "ethnic or ideological" goals (termed "benefits" in Blakesley's listing).
Terrorism occurs both in the context of violent resistance to the state as well as in theservice of
state interests. . Terrorist violence communicates a political message; its ends go beyonddamaging
an enemy's material resources. The victims or objects of terrorist attacks have littlefundamental
value to the terrorist group but represent a larger human audience whose reaction theterrorists seek.
Violence characterized by spontaneity, mass participation, or a primary intent of
physicaldestruction can therefore be excluded from our investigation. 7

Everyone has a theory about the real causes of 9/11. They range from the nutty (it was the US
government) to the plausible but flawed (a response to foreign occupation) to the credible
(collateral damage from a clash within Islam)
No event in recent times has produced as many explanations as the 11th September attacks five
years ago. Within the space of an hour, al Qaeda inflicted more direct damage on the US than the
Soviet Union had done throughout the cold war, a cataclysm seen by more people than any other
event in history. Yet it took only 19 men armed with small knives to destroy the World Trade
Centre, demolish a wing of the Pentagon and kill 3,000 people. This mismatch has led some—
especially in the Muslim world—to seek a deus ex machina to explain what otherwise appears
inexplicable. The usual suspects have been assembled on 9/11’s grassy knoll: the Jews were behind
the attacks; the US government engineered them; the “Cheney-Bush energy junta” planned them
so that they could grab the oil fields of central Asia, and so on.

Osama bin Laden himself claims that al Qaeda was solely responsible for 9/11. In 2004, he released
a video in which he explained his dealings with lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. After the largest
criminal investigation in history, the US government’s 9/11 commission also concluded that al
Qaeda was solely responsible for the attacks. 8

9/11 took a terrible toll on Pakistan. As the U.S. takes stock of the decade since the 9/11 attacks,
it's worth considering the impact elsewhere. First up, Pakistan:

Before 9/11, Pakistan had suffered just one suicide bombing — a 1995 attack on the Egyptian
Embassy in the capital, Islamabad, that killed 15 people. In the last decade, suicide bombers have
struck Pakistani targets more than 290 times, killing at least 4,600 people and injuring 10,000.

The country averaged nearly six terrorist attacks of various kinds each day in 2010, according to a
report by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies....

For Pakistanis, said Cyril Almeida, a leading Pakistani columnist, "it was easy to connect the dots.
9/11 happened, America invaded Afghanistan, and Pakistan went to hell. That's the most common
narrative that's offered."

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7. The Causes of Terrorism - Martha Crenshaw
8. Peter Bergen / September 24, 2006
Pakistan's leaders maintain that the alliance with the U.S. against Islamic militants has destroyed
the country's investment climate, caused widespread unemployment and ravaged productivity. The
government estimates the alliance has cost it $67 billion over the last 10 years.

But it's not as simple as that. Since 2001, the U.S. has sent Pakistan more than $20 billion in direct
aid and military reimbursements. And from 2003 to 2007 under Musharraf, the economy grew at
a robust rate of 6% a year. 9

After 9/11’s attacks, terrorism reached to its peak. Many terrorist incidents took place in Pakistan.
Peak year of terrorism was 2009 & 2010 in which thousands of people died and injured.

Worst example of terrorist attack was Lal masjid incidence and APS attack.

A group of militants from the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or
TTP, stormed the Army Public School in the city of Peshawar today, killing 141 people, most of
them children.

There are many questions to be answered, and perhaps the most obvious one is: Why target a
school full of children? 10

Several Legislations have been made to suppress the terrorism. Pakistan Protection Act 2014 and
Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 are the examples of this legislations. Pakistani President Mamnoon
Hussain on July 11 gave Pakistani citizens a new reason to fear the country’s security forces. He
signed into law the Protection of Pakistan Act, whose provisions open the door for the violation of
fundamental rights to freedom of speech, privacy, peaceful assembly and a fair trial.

Although the law has just a two-year mandate, it could quickly be used to suppress peaceful
political opposition and criticism of government policy. The non-governmental Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan rightly described the law as a ‘blatant attack on the fundamental rights of
the people’. The law violates fundamental rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Pakistan ratified in 2010.

No one questions the Pakistani government’s need to tackle the very real dangers posed by
terrorism. Pakistan’s ever-lengthening list of people killed in unlawful attacks by militant groups
demands a response. Victims include the 18-plus people killed on June 8 when militants attacked
Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. The very next day, heavily-armed gunmen from a militant
group attacked a group of Shia pilgrims in the town of Taftan in Balochistan province.

The attackers — including suicide bombers — raked the pilgrims with machine gun fire and tossed
hand grenades. At least 30 people died, including at least nine women and a child.

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9. 9/11's Impact on Pakistan - By Greg Scoblete September 06, 2011

10. December 16, 2014 By Timothy McGrath
However, rather than bolstering the security of Pakistani citizens, the Protection of Pakistan
Act raises the likelihood of greater abuses without greater protection. Pakistan’s response to these
acts needs to be in accordance with the rule of law.

Members of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) party got a foretaste of the dangers of the new
law on June 17 when the Lahore police fired on stone-throwing PAT supporters without warning,
killing at least eight unarmed people. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has ordered a judicial
inquiry into the incident.

But Pakistani citizens wrongfully killed or injured by security forces operating on the basis of the
Protection of Pakistan Act will have no such legal recourse. The new law grants Pakistan’s security
forces and judicial officials acting under the law effective immunity ‘for the acts done in good
faith during the performance of their duties’. This blanket immunity violates Article 2(3) of the
international covenant, which requires governments to ensure that anyone whose rights or
freedoms are violated ‘shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been
committed by persons acting in an official capacity’.

Peaceful political protesters and critics of government policies are particularly vulnerable to abuses
under the new law because of dangerous ambiguity in its definition of terrorist acts. Besides
‘killing, kidnapping, extortion’, the law classifies vague acts, including ‘Internet offenses and other
offenses related to information technology’ as prosecutable crimes without providing specific
definitions for these offenses. The terms are so ambiguous that a non-violent online political
protest might be considered ‘threatening the security of Pakistan’. The United Nations special
rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism has criticised legal definitions of terrorism that
include property crimes, saying they should be limited to acts ‘committed against members of the
general population, or segments of it, with the intention of causing death or serious bodily injury,
or the taking of hostages’.

The Protection of Pakistan Act contains other perils to the rights and security of Pakistanis. The
law expands the powers of arrest without warrant for the police, members of the armed forces and
‘civil armed forces’. All of those forces, under the new law, have the discretion to ‘enter and search
without warrant any premises to make any arrest or to take possession of any firearm, explosive,
weapon, vehicle, instrument, or article used or likely to be used in the commission of any scheduled
offense’. The law permits them to do so without sufficient judicial control in violation of
guarantees against arbitrary arrest and the privacy and the security of the home under the ICCPR.

Most ominously, the law denies Pakistanis one of the most fundamental human rights protections
— the presumption of innocence. Under Article 14 of the International Covenant, everyone should
have ‘the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law’. Instead, the law
removes the burden of proof of criminal conduct from government prosecutors and requires
criminal suspects to prove their innocence. The law states that those arrested for suspected
terrorism offenses ‘shall be presumed to be engaged in waging war or insurrection against Pakistan
unless he establishes his non-involvement in the offense’.

It was these dangerous flaws that prompted Pakistan’s Senate in April to attempt to derail the law
until the government excised elements of it that are intrinsically hostile to universal rights and
freedoms. Although that effort failed, the law still must pass judicial scrutiny. On July 16, the
Islamabad High Court accepted a challenge of the law’s constitutionality based on Article 8 of
Pakistan’s Constitution, which states that ‘Laws inconsistent with or in derogation of fundamental
rights to be void’.

Denying Pakistanis their universal rights and freedoms isn’t a smart or effective tool for battling
terrorism. The Islamabad High Court challenge gives the government an opportunity to reassess
the Protection of Pakistan Act and craft a new/revised law that addresses serious crimes while
protecting fundamental rights. Failure to do so will make Pakistanis less safe and spell a dangerous
defeat for the rule of law. 11

Pakistan Parliament gave twenty agenda items of National Action Plan of 2014.

The 20 agenda items of National Action Plan 2014 are:

1. Implementation of death sentence of those convicted in cases of terrorism.

2. Special trial courts under the supervision of Army. The duration of these courts would be two
years.
3. Militant outfits and armed gangs will not be allowed to operate in the country.
4. NACTA, the anti-terrorism institution will be strengthened.
5. Strict action against the literature, newspapers and magazines promoting hatred, extremism,
sectarianism and intolerance.
6. Choking financing for terrorist and terrorist organizations.
7. Ensuring against re-emergence of proscribed organizations.
8. Establishing and deploying a dedicated counter-terrorism force.
9. Taking effective steps against religious persecution.
10. Registration and regulation of religious seminaries.
11. Ban on glorification of terrorists and terrorist organizations through print and electronic
media.
12. Administrative and development reforms in FATA with immediate focus on repatriation of
IDPs.
13. Communication network of terrorists will be dismantled completely.
14. Measures against abuse of internet and social media for terrorism.
15. Zero tolerance for militancy in Punjab.
16. Ongoing operation in Karachi will be taken to its logical end.
17. Balochistan government to be fully empowered for political reconciliation with complete
ownership by all stakeholders.
18. Dealing firmly with sectarian terrorists.
19. Formulation of a comprehensive policy to deal with the issue of Afghan refugees, beginning
with registration of all refugees.
20. Revamping and reforming the criminal justice system. 12

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11. Pakistan’s dangerous anti-terrorism law By Phelim Kine Deputy Director, Asia Division (published in The
Tribune July 21, 2014)
12. National Action Plan, 2014
In the UK, the legal definition of terrorism is provided in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This
defines terrorism as the use or threat of action which:
 involves serious violence against a person
 involves serious damage to property
 endangers a person’s life
 creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public; or
 is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system

In circumstances where:
 the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a
section of the public; and
 the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological
cause.

There are now four main pieces of counter-terrorism legislation: the Terrorism Act 2000, the Anti-
Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, and the Terrorism
Act 2006. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997 is also relevant to the debate
over counter-terrorism powers in the UK.

The Terrorism Act 2000 continues to provide the main framework for counter-terrorism powers in
the UK. It contains the main powers for arrest and extended pre-charge detention in terrorism cases
as well as the main terrorism offences outside the ordinary criminal law, for example, membership
of and support for a proscribed organisation. Ironically it was intended to be a single,
comprehensive piece of counter-terrorism legislation intended to replace the patchwork of
temporary legislation that had arisen over 30 years of the Northern Ireland conflict. 13

While in USA, The Patriot Act is legislation passed in 2001 to improve the abilities of U.S.
law enforcement to detect and deter terrorism. The act’s official title is, “Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism,” or USA-PATRIOT. Though the Patriot Act was modified in 2015 to help
ensure the Constitutional rights of ordinary Americans, some provisions of the law remain
controversial. 14

After evaluating I would suggest that there is need for holding dialogues on pressing national
issues, such as center-province relations, role of religion, the country’s foreign policy – among
the most relevant stakeholders, who otherwise do not interact with each other. Without such
dialogues, our debates and answers are no less than clichés, leaving us stuck with the past, even
though strides have been made in many spheres of life.

These are some of the major findings of the report on the first-ever “Dialogue Pakistan”,
comprising of five different thematic sessions on the critical, intellectual, and policy issues of the
country held early this year.
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13. Counter-Terrorism And Human Rights – UK Terrorism Act 2000

https://justice.org.uk/counter-terrorism-human-rights/
14. Dec 19, 2017 – Patriot Act, History.com Editors