Criminal Law Can Win the Battle Against Terrorist Fundamentalism
It has been often said, since the tragedy of September 11, that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is different from other forms of crime - an actual war launched against Western countries from foreign-based terrorist centers. The conclusion that is invariably drawn from this premise is that criminal law is not the right tool to combat such a war, and that it should be the responsibility of the executive branch and intelligence services bolstered with emergency powers.
Recent news warns against such an extra-judicial perspective, however. On May 5, it was reported by Corriere della Sera that a 22-year-old Syrian, disembarked with other refugees in Pozzallo in 2015 and then sent to custody for 14 months as a suspected Islamic terrorist on the basis of evidence that turned out, in court debate, to be completely devoid of substance. In another article published on the same day, we read of an Albanian sentenced to two years for calumny by the Court of Milan, because as an alleged source of Israeli intelligence services. he gave the Italian police false information on seven foreigners who were said to be planning an attack on a Milanese synagogue.
It's not that anybody wants to underplay the threat of fundamentalist terrorism, which has inflicted grievous suffering in countries that are Italy's neighbors, and that keeps reaping victims throughout the world, not least among Muslims themselves. The point is that it is untrue, as it has been conversely argued by many, that the criminal system lacks the weapons to fight this battle. Precisely the opposite is true: penal law is now able to react promptly to every even remote preliminary activity concerning future attacks, by ordering arrest, custody and long prison sentences against those who. for example, rally to global jihad on social media or download videos containing instructions on how to carry out suicide attacks. And the criminal system is able to acquire evidence on such activities because it has sophisticated investigative tools that enable it, with the prior permission of a judge, to enter the physical and digital domicile of suspects and monitor their activities 24/7.
With respect to intelligence services, criminal law has a great advantage: it is a transparent system, open to continuous checks by a plurality of court actors called to verify the correctness of the decisions made by the police and public prosecutors. And it is a system, above all, that allows suspect to defend themselves, confront the charges brought against them, and try to demonstrate their innocence. Just as it happened to those unjustly accused of terrorism in the circumstances that Corriere della Sera described.
Today, fighting terrorism with the weapons of the law is an absolute priority if we want to avoid the risk of shooting blind into the crowd of anyone suspected of fundamentalist sympathies. That risk could be fatal, because in order to win this battle we need to isolate dangerous individuals from their communities, whose valuable alliance we badly need. We can only earn it by ensuring fair trials for the suspects with rulings based on transparent and solid evidence.