Terrorism Crimes

Terrorism Crimes

For thousands of years, terrorism has been used as a vehicle for those engaged in a political struggle in different countries around the world. Historically, groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the African National Congress, and the Irish Republican Army have been said to have engaged in terrorist attacks for the purpose of gaining political power and control in their respective countries. Although the concept of terrorism is well known, the face of terrorism dramatically changed in the United States and abroad during the last several decades of the twentieth century. (Esposito & Mogahed, 2012)

Terrorist attacks are generally undertaken by groups, rather than by individuals. This pattern, however, is certainly not without its exceptions. For example, a domestic terrorist in the United States referred to as the Unabomber, killed three people and maimed a reported twenty-nine others, with his identity being unknown by the Federal Bureau of Investigations for years. Forensic scientists were able to discover, however, similarities among the terrorist bombs attributed to the Unabomber over the course of nearly two decades. (Musharraf, 2011)Although the authorities were able to track a long and intricate pattern of bombs attributable to a single person, the Unabomber's identity remained unknown. In 1995, the authorities received the break that they had been waiting for when David Kaczynski began to suspect that his older brother, Ted Kaczynski, may have been the Unabomber. Faced with these suspicions, David Kaczynski informed the proper law enforcement authorities. The Unabomber acting alone in carrying out his terrorist attacks, however, is unusual given the traditional type of terrorism in both the United States and abroad. (Hoffman, 2011)

Traditionally, terrorism was used by political groups as a means of getting noticed. These groups engaged in dangerous crimes, for example, car-bombings and hijackings, in order to raise awareness of their existence, issues, and their causes. In these cases, in launching their violent awareness campaigns, terrorism generally harmed or killed few people. These terrorist groups used violent methods to attempt to achieve a result which they believed would change the world for the better. (Alexander & Swetnam, 2010)

By contrast, the so-called new face of terrorism is comprised of fanatic individuals who often share the common belief that the world is beyond redemption and, therefore, unable to be saved. Their goal is destruction for the sake violence and often revenge. This new brand of terrorism has taken place in the United States on several occasions during 1990s. The United States experienced an increasing number of foreign-inspired and domestic-inspired terrorist attacks that were specifically designed to harm or kill large numbers of people. In 1993, for example, foreign-inspired terrorists bombed of the World Trade Center in New York. A bomb exploded in the parking structure beneath the building and killed six people. Investigation revealed that the attack was intended to cause the collapse of another building, which would have killed a possible 250,000 people who were inside those buildings at the time. In April 1995, white supremacist Timothy McVeigh bombed the ...