The Right of Self-Defence and The “War on Terrorism” One Year after September 11

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Schmalenbach

The destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon by three highjacked civilian airliners and the crash of a fourth in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 constitute without a doubt the high point of terrorist attacks on the United States to date. The terrorists’ methods, their destructive force and the attacks’ economic and political effects are all without precedent. After September 11, the organisation responsible was quickly identified, namely a terrorist group based in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, headed by a Saudi expatriate, Osama bin Laden. After a request for his extradition was denied by the ruling Taliban, the United States and the United Kingdom conducted airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan beginning on October 7. As soon as late November 2001, the Taliban's fate was sealed. The uninterrupted bombardment of the US Air Force helped the Northern Alliance gain decisive ground in its campaign against the regime. On December 15, 2001, the various Afghan opposition groups signed a treaty on the Petersberg near Bonn, Germany, that established an interim government. The government's establishment put an end to the Taliban's rule, but it did not put an end to international terrorism with its various goals and interwoven structures.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh

In January 2002, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan descent, pleaded not guilty in Virginia federal court to six counts of conspiring to commit acts of international terrorism in connection with the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In other times, it would have seemed unremarkable for someone charged with conspiring to murder American citizens and destroy American property on American soil to be tried in a U.S. civilian court. More than two centuries ago, Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 of the United States Constitution granted Congress the power to "define and punish Piracies, Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations," a power that Congress immediately exercised by criminalizing piracy, the eighteenth-century version of modern terrorism. Since then, Congress has criminalized numerous other international offenses. In recent decades, United States courts have decided criminal cases convicting international hijackers, terrorists, and drug smugglers, as well as a string of well-publicized civil lawsuits adjudicating gross human rights violations. Most pertinent, federal prosecutors have successfully tried and convicted in U.S. courts numerous members of Al Qaeda, the very terrorist group charged with planning the September 11 attacks, for earlier attacks on the World Trade Center and the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.


1951 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 416-416

A meeting of the International Sugar Council was held in London, June 26 to July 20, 1950. The meeting was attended by delegates of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, France, Haiti, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Peru, Philippine Republic, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, and the United States. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the world situation in sugar and the proposal for a new international sugar agreement. The council adopted a protocol which extended the international sugar agreement of 1937 one year from August 31, 1950. During 1950, the council created a special committee to 1) study the changing sugar situation as it related to the need or desirability for negotiating a new agreement, and 2) report to the council, as occasion might arise, on its findings and recommendations as to the possible basis of a new agreement. The special committee prepared a document which set forth certain proposals in the form of a preliminary draft agreement. The draft agreement included six fundamental bases: 1) the regulation of exports, 2) the stabilization of sugar prices on the world market, 3) a solution to the currency problem, 4) the limitation of sugar production by importing countries, 5) measures to increase consumption of sugar and 6) the treatment of non-signatory countries. The draft was then considered by the council at its meeting on July 20 at which time the council decided to submit it to member and observer governments for comments and to transmit such comments for consideration at a meeting of the special committee.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ida Susilowati ◽  
Nur Rohim Yunus ◽  
Muhammad Sholeh

Abstract: Terrorism is a crime committed by a group of people to frighten, terrorize, intimidate a country's government. In the case of the September 11, 2001 terror that occurred at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States accused the al-Qaeda group of being behind the attack. Furthermore, the United States attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. America considers the attacks carried out are legitimate because they are carried out to reduce world terrorism crimes. Whereas behind that there is another motive for controlling the oil in the country that it attacked.Keywords: Terrorism, Intervention, United States. Abstrak:Terorisme merupakan kejahatan yang dilakukan oleh sekelompok orang guna menakuti, meneror, mengintimidasi pemerintahan suatu negara. Dalam kasus teror 11 September 2001 yang terjadi pada World Trade Center dan Pentagon, Amerika Serikat menuduh kelompok al-qaidah di balik serangan tersebut. Selanjutnya Amerika Serikat melakukan penyerangan terhadap Afghanistan dan Iraq. Amerika menganggap serangan yang dilakukan adalah sah karena dilakukan untuk meredam kejahatan terorisme dunia. Padahal di balik itu ada motif lain untuk menguasai minyak yang ada di negara yang diserangnya.Kata Kunci: Terrorisme, Intervensi, Amerika Serikat


2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 861-867
Author(s):  
Michael A. Newton

For nearly three decades, the United States has offered monetary rewards designed to facilitate the apprehension and transfer for trial of suspects when their trial would directly advance American national interests. In the 1990s, for example, posters and matchbooks appeared across the Balkans with contact information available to anyone who might be willing to assist in the transfer of Slobodan Milošević or Radovan Karadžić to face charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugloslavia. In Congress’s view, this rewards program has helped to generate actionable intelligence that has prevented terrorist attacks, aided convictions of key suspects charged with participation in other acts of international terror, and served as “one of the most valuable assets the U.S. Government has in the fight against international terrorism.” In his public comments introducing this legislation, the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes acknowledged that fourteen payments were made under existing legislation in the two years prior to passage of this bill, averaging $400,000 per person. Details remain classified of course, but the rewards have provided instrumental incentives in numerous high profile cases, inter alia, the arrest of the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein at the hands of American military forces following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.


Author(s):  
Daniel Byman

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the entire world was introduced to Al Qaeda and its enigmatic leader, Osama bin Laden. But the organization that changed the face of terrorism forever and unleashed a whirlwind of counterterrorism activity and two major wars had been on the scene long before that eventful morning. In Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know, Daniel L. Byman, an eminent scholar of Middle East terrorism and international security who served on the 9/11 Commission, provides a sharp and concise overview of Al Qaeda, from its humble origins in the mountains of Afghanistan to the present, explaining its perseverance and adaptation since 9/11 and the limits of U.S. and allied counterterrorism efforts. The organization that would come to be known as Al Qaeda traces its roots to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Founded as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda achieved a degree of international notoriety with a series of spectacular attacks in the 1990s; however, it was the dramatic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 that truly launched Al Qaeda onto the global stage. The attacks endowed the organization with world-historical importance and provoked an overwhelming counterattack by the United States and other western countries. Within a year of 9/11, the core of Al Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan and into a variety of refuges across the Muslim world. Splinter groups and franchised offshoots were active in the 2000s in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen, but by early 2011, after more than a decade of relentless counterterrorism efforts by the United States and other Western military and intelligence services, most felt that Al Qaeda's moment had passed. With the death of Osama bin Laden in May of that year, many predicted that Al Qaeda was in its death throes. Shockingly, Al Qaeda has staged a remarkable comeback in the last few years. In almost every conflict in the Muslim world, from portions of the Xanjing region in northwest China to the African subcontinent, Al Qaeda franchises or like-minded groups have played a role. Al Qaeda's extreme Salafist ideology continues to appeal to radicalized Sunni Muslims throughout the world, and it has successfully altered its organizational structure so that it can both weather America's enduring full-spectrum assault and tailor its message to specific audiences. Authoritative and highly readable, Byman's account offers readers insightful and penetrating answers to the fundamental questions about Al Qaeda: who they are, where they came from, where they're going-and, perhaps most critically-what we can do about it.


Refuge ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Cynthia Wright

Striking new campaigns across Europe, the United States, and Australia led by refugees, im/migrants, undocumented people, and allies challenge controls over the right to move freely across borders. Situating similar formations within Canada in transnational context, this article anatomizes the impact of September 11 on North American organizing. Drawing on the argument that the construction of September 11 as a national event was ideologically necessary for war abroad and criminalization of immigrants domestically, the article evaluates strategies for confronting state criminalization, detention, racialized citizenship, and “illegality.” It concludes that, far from utopian, “no-border” and “undocumented” movements are fundamentally politically necessary in the current dangerous conjuncture.


It was acknowledged in the 1997 White Paper Your Right To Know that the United Kingdom could learn much from the experience of other countries with established FOI regimes. The draftsman of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 had regard to the statutory schemes of five such countries whose jurisprudence has precedent value in our courts: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Chapter 25 looks at their different approaches to the fundamental elements of any FOI regime, and gives examples of how their courts have interpreted and applied the respective statutes. The chapter notes common themes and recurrent sources of controversy, notably delays in responding to requests, charges for access, and the position of affected third parties. It traces how the legislation in each country has been adapted over the years, and where there is pressure for yet further reforms.


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