Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Bollocks. Whether the victim of a crime is military or civilian is utterly irrelevant as to whether it's a crime.Korto wrote:If the victim was military, then it's not terrorism.
That would be the best solution. Terrorism is differentiated from "normal" crime only by its political dimension. It sometimes requires a military and political response due to the scale involved, but there's no fundamental difference.Assuming they don't just call it plain, everyday murder (one for the lawyers).
All terrorism that kills people is murder by definition. When we bother to try terrorists we charge them with murder as well as terrorism.EnterpriseSovereign wrote:I'm surprised that people haven't simply called it murder, since that's what it appears to be.
IMO you're missing the point; there is no doubt that a crime was committed and as Flagg says, that crime is murder.Captain Seafort wrote:Bollocks. Whether the victim of a crime is military or civilian is utterly irrelevant as to whether it's a crime.Korto wrote:If the victim was military, then it's not terrorism.
Korto's statement seemed to infer that there was doubt that a crime was committed, due to the fact that the victim was a member of the armed forces. If I was mistaken, I apologise, if not the correction stands.UnderAGreySky wrote:IMO you're missing the point; there is no doubt that a crime was committed and as Flagg says, that crime is murder.
From what I've heard he was in civvies at the time. As for terrorising the population, terrorist organisations frequently target members of the armed forces as well as civilians, either to prevent them supporting the civil power, to try and provoke an attitude "if the military aren't safe how can we be?", or out of a delusion of being a military force themselves. See the Provos for example.The question of terrorism is a trickier one; if the objective was to terrorise a populace then picking random innocent civilians would have been their priority and not running down a military service person (wearing a uniform?).
It's certainly a possibility.The grey area is whether they were trying to terrorise active military members into being cautious in non-combat environments. That's up in the air.
Bollocks. Korto's statement said outright it was not terrorism, and made absolutely no judgement about whether or not it was a crime. While there's apparently no official definition of terrorism agreed worldwide, it's pretty widely agreed it's got to be against the civilian population. Whether or not he was in civilian clothes is completely immaterial.Captain Seafort wrote:Korto's statement seemed to infer that there was doubt that a crime was committed, due to the fact that the victim was a member of the armed forces. If I was mistaken, I apologise, if not the correction stands.
Absolutely not. Terrorism is the use of violence by a non-state actor to achieve a political end. Whether the target of that violence is civilian or military is irrelevant.Korto wrote:While there's apparently no official definition of terrorism agreed worldwide, it's pretty widely agreed it's got to be against the civilian population.
Since this definition is quite new to me, could you provide me a citation please? Because I can easily conceive of state-sponsored or state-run organisations terrorising a populace whether within or outside the state itself and so my perceived definition of it was in line with that of Korto.Captain Seafort wrote:Absolutely not. Terrorism is the use of violence by a non-state actor to achieve a political end. Whether the target of that violence is civilian or military is irrelevant.Korto wrote:While there's apparently no official definition of terrorism agreed worldwide, it's pretty widely agreed it's got to be against the civilian population.
So you're right in that there's nothing about non-state actors. However, the counter to Korto's claim that it's not terrorism if the target is military stands.(1) In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where-
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it-
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.
