Act of Terror or 'Attempted Murder'
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar rented a Jeep SUV, by his own account the bigest he could get to inflict the greatest damage. He openly declared the he ran down UNC students in campus courtyard in order to protest the US government’s ‘mistreatment of Muslims’ in the world. Yet, the charges against him are no more than attempted murder.
Ed Morrisey asks simpy, Can We Call This Terrorism Yet?
Astoundingly, the initial defense of not bringing terrorism charges against him was because he was not linked to a known terrorist group.
Perhaps someone could inform those who argue that reasoning that terrorism is an act - such as running down students in the name of Islam - and not a club. If this is the case, then terrorism charges against Timothy McVeigh should be dropped post-humously.
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First off I’m a big fan of the site. You guys do important work here.
As others have noted, the act does not seem to fit the legal definition of terrorism as it is focused on the intent to intimidate, influence, or affect the affair of citizens and government bodies. Taheri-azar’s defence will not have a hard time playing this incident up as plain vanilla rage and retaliation. He appeared to have no objectives beyond that.
While we can all agree that this was an atrocious act, I don’t think we can conclude that this is terrorism given the current legal definition.
Are we ready to accept as a ‘terrorist act’ any that involves any sort of religious or political motivation whatsoever? This may be a good time to decide. The sooner we get a strong legal framework in place to deal with threats, the safer we will be.
Comment by: Matt Smith
March 8, 2006 7:45 AM