The Legislative Criminal Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards the Criminal Phenomenon of Terrorism

Abstract

Terrorism has been derived from the Latin root "terror" meaning fear or panic. It means an action performed by an individual or a group of people who seek to achieve their political goals through the creation of fears and the use of force. The violent and illegal acts of governments to suppress their opponents and horrifying them is an instance of terrorism, referred to as "state terrorism". The root of the term "terror", in this sense, dates back to the French Revolution; i.e., between 1792 and 1794, known as the era of terrorism. Thus, the term "terrorism" can be defined as "creating fear among a mass or group of people in order to break up their resistance and establish a political system or process based on this fear through the use of violent acts". Jurists have two different views about whether terrorism is an independent criminal act, or a criminal offense under criminal law. The first view is that terrorist acts fall into one of the criminal offenses, and the judge dealing with the case must find the accusation title in the criminal rules depending on the act performed by a terrorist. In fact, terrorism is not a new crime in its concept, and terrorist acts are considered among crimes against persons, such as murder and assault, or crimes against property such as destruction and firing, or crimes against security and general welfare, such as waging war against God and corruption on earth, and the German and Iranian legislators support the first view. The second view holds that terrorist acts are relatively new criminal offenses, which should be independently criminalized in the legal systems of countries. France supports the second view, as the French legislator made reforms in 1996 in the penal code adopted in 1992 and dedicated a specific article to terrorism.