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International Law’s Literature of Terror

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Ed Morgan
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Extract

It is the theory of this paper that while the natural analytic tendency is to seek the legal character of terror in the impugned act, it can actually be found only by examining the narrative of the law. As a legal concept, terrorism strikes not at the political power of states or at the safety of individual citizens, but at the law's own stability as law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , July 2002 , pp. 317 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1. Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar at 403.

2. King, Stephen, Danse Macabre (New York: Everest House, 1981)Google Scholar at 25–26.

3. Lawrence, D.H., “Edgar Allan Poe” in Carlson, Eric W., ed., The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Criticism Since 1829 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966)Google Scholar at 11.

4. Burduck, Michael L., Grim Phantasms: Fear in Poe’s Short Fiction (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992)Google Scholar at ix.

5. See In the Matter of the Extradition of Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, 924 F. Supp. 565 (S.D.N. Y 1996) (describing terrorist threat of both political and military wings of Hamas); and also, A Brief Overview of the Current Global Threat Environment, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Public Report, June 1999, at: http://www.csisscrs.gc.ca/eng/-publicrp/publ999e.html (identifying Islamic extremism as “the preeminent international terrorist threat”).

6. U.N. General Assembly Resolution 46/51, Dec. 9, 1991, U.N. Doc. A/46/654 (“Deeply disturbed by the world-wide persistence of acts of international terrorism in all its forms….”). See also, International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, 1997, and International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Financing, 1999, both of which are posted at: http://www.untreaty.un.org/English/Terrorism.asp.

7. See Countering the Threat of International Terrorism, U.S. National Commission on Terrorism, June 2000, at: http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/commission.html (legal proceedings against Pan Am flight 103 fugitives effective where political approaches failed). In the post-September 1 Ith context, see the statement by NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson, on October 2,2001, declaring the attacks to be action covered by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, at: http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s011002a.htm.

8. See, e.g., Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 795 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (“… the nations of the world are so divisively split on the legitimacy of such aggression as to make it impossible to pinpoint an area of harmony or consensus”).

9. Patterns of Global Terrorism, U.S. Department of State, March 1989 at v (“‘terrorism’ is premeditated, politically motivated violence…”).

10. United States v. Rahmin, 854 F. Supp. 254 (S.D.N. Y. 1994) (World Trade Center bombing conspirator accused of “acts of terrorism designed to undermine the foreign relations of the United States”).

11. Ibid.

12. Eain v. Wilkes, 641 F. 2d 504,515 (7th Cir. 1980) (quoting legal advisor for the State Department’s Office of Combating Terrorism).

13. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), art. 51 (2), adopted June 8, 1977, 16 I.L.M. 1396, 1413 (condemning violent acts spreading terror among civilian populations); Council of Europe, European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism, arts. 1,2,15 l.L.M. 1272, 1272–3 (1976) (terrorist acts excluded from ‘political offense’ exception to treaties between European states).

14. Michael L. Burduck, supra note 4 at ix. (Poe’s Gothic tales “manipulate the conventions of that horror to register subtly on the fears and phobias of his reading audiences”).

15. King, supra note 2 at 25–26.

16. Ahmad v. Wigen, 726 F. Supp. 389 (E.D.N. Y. 1989), affirmed 910 F. 2d 1063 (2d Cir. 1990).

17. Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Man Who Was Used Up” in Peithman, Stephen, ed., The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1981)Google Scholar at 566.

18. Griffith, Clark, “Poe and the Gothic” in Veler, Richard P., ed., Papers On Poe: Essays in Honor of John Ward Ostrom (Springfield, OH: Chantry Music Press, 1972)Google Scholar at 21 (“… the [Gothic-style] terror of which [Poe] wrote came not from Germany but from the soul.”).

19. Supra note 16. All further references are to the District Court decision, 726 F. Supp. 389.

20. Collins v. Miller, 252 U.S. 364,369 (1920) (extradition proceedings before a committing magistrate are not subject to appeal, but are subject to habeas corpus review).

21. Convention on Extradition Between the Government of the United States and the Government of the State of Israel, December 10, 1962, 14 U.S.T. 1707, T.l.A.S. No. 5476 (hereinafter the “Extradition Treaty”).

22. The source of international law’s concern for protection of innocent victims as well as an innocent accused person was identified by the court as no less an authority than the Book of Genesis. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 405 (“The Bible acknowledges that it would be wrong to punish the innocent in Sodom because of the guilt of their neighbors”) (citing Genesis 18:24–26).

23. Supra note 16 at 409.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid at 401.

26. Supra note 17 at 567 (describing “the odd air of je ne sais quoi”).

27. Ibid at 566–67.

28. Ibid, (all of which gives rise to a “dignity of colossal proportion”).

29. Ibid, at 573.

30. Extradition Treaty, supra note 21, art. I.

31. 18 U.S.C. §3184.

32. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 398, citing United Slates v. Toscanino, 500 F. 2d 267 (2d Cir. 1974).

33. Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Person in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, T.I.A.S. No. 3365, 75 U.N.T.S. 287, art. 64(1).

34. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 398, citing Bassiouni, M. Cherif, International Extradition and World Public Order (1974) at 255–61.

35. Ibid, at 398, citing Terrorist Acts Abroad Against United States Nationals, 18 U.S.C. § 2331.

36. “The Man Who Was Used Up,” supra note 17 at 569.

37. Ibid.

38. Job 14:1–2 (“Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”).

39. “The Man Who Was Used Up,” supra note 17 at 570.

40. Ibid.

41. Othello 111, iii (“Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world/Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep/Which thou ow’dst yesterday!”).

42. Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law § 476, Reporters’ Note 4 at 574 (describing two classes of “pure” and “relative” political offenses).

43. Carcia-Guillern v. United States, 450 F. 2d 1189 (5th Cir. 1971), cert, denied, 405 U.S. 989 (1972).

44. Quinn v. Robinson, 783 F. 2d 776, 789 (9th Cir. 1985) (warning against the risk of assessing political offenses in accordance with the “majoritarian consensus or favor due or not due to the country seeking extradition”).

45. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 402.

46. Eain v. Wilkes, 641 F. 2d 504 (7th Cir. 1980) (P.L.O. member accused of killing 36 people in bomb planted in public square in city of Tiberias extradited to Israel).

47. David Forte, ‘Terror and Terrorism: There is a Difference” (1986) 13 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 39; United States Department of State Bulletin, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1987 at v. (1988).

48. In re Requested Extradition ofMackin, Mag. No. 80 Cr. Misc. 1 at 54, slip op. (S.D.N.Y. August 13, 1981), appeal dismissed, 668 F. 2d 122 (2d Cir. 1981) (political offense exception applied to I.R.A. member accused of shooting British soldier in Northern Ireland).

49. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 407, citing Calley v. Callaway, 519 F. 2d 184 (5th Cir. 1975) (“An order to kill infants and unarmed civilians … is … palpably illegal”).

50. “The Man Who Was Used Up” supra note 17 at 571.

51. Ibid.

52. Peithman, ed., supra note 17 at 571, n. 29 (“Manfred is the hero of Byron’s dramatic poem Manfred (1817), who sells himself to the Prince of Darkness and lives in splendid solitude in the Alps”).

53. See Ortwin De Graef, “The Eye of the Text: Two Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe” (1989) 104 MLN 1099, 1104.

54. Aeneid, II, 204 (“1 shudder recalling it.”).

55. Hoffman, Daniel, Poe Poe Poe … (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1971)Google Scholar at 195 (“But I think that underneath the prank he is in deadly, if cranky, earnest”).

56. “The Man Who Was Used Up,” supra note 17 at 572.

57. Ibid, (“between a squeak and a whistle”).

58. Ibid, at 573 (italics in original).

59. Hamlet, II, ii.

60. May, Charles E., Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991)Google Scholar at 35.

61. William Whipple, “Poe’s Political Satire” (1956) 25 U. Tex. Stud, in English 81, 91–94 (suggesting General Smith’s character represents a satirical attack on Vice President Richard M. Johnson).

62. Ketterer, David, The Rationale of Deception in Poe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979)Google Scholar at 74 (describing ‘grotesques’ as dealing with the theme of deception). See also Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar at 169–70 (positing the importance of the juxtaposition of illusion with reality in the manner of grotesque comedies).

63. De Graef, supra note 53 at 1105.

64. “The Man Who Was Used Up,” supra note 17 at 568.

65. Ibid, at 566 (“there was an air distingué pervading the whole man”).

66. Ahmad, supra note 16 at 407, citing Bennett, “United States Initiatives in the United Nations to Combat International Terrorism” (1973) 7 Int’l L. 754 (“[W]e have attempted to identify specific categories of offenses which, because of their grave and inhuman effect on innocent persons or because of their serious interference with the vital machinery of international life, should be condemned by states of every ideological alignment.”).