Incitement to terrorism
Incitement to terrorism is a category in some national legal systems which may criminalize direct encouragement of acts of violence or praise for proscribed terrorist organizations. It was also prohibited by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1624 in 2005.
Overview[edit]
Legal scholars Daphne Barak-Erez and David Scharia have identified a difference in approach between European and United States laws criminalizing incitement to terrorism; the former tend to focus on the content of the speech and whether it supports terrorist violence, while the latter focuses on whether the speaker is linked to proscribed organizations.[1] The European approach involves explicit limits on freedom of speech, while the United States approach is more indirect.[2]
Incitement is an inchoate offense and is punishable even if no causal connection with a terror attack is proven. Merely establishing terrorism as a potential result of the speech is sufficient.[3]
One major motivation for criminalizing incitement to terrorism is its potential usefulness as an upstream prevention for deadly terror attacks.[4] Some experts even argue that incitement is a sine qua non for terrorist attacks.[5]
By country[edit]
France[edit]
Article 24 of the Press Law of 1881 criminalizes the incitement and advocacy of terrorism, as well as apologia for terrorism. As of 2011, the penalty was up to five years imprisonment and/or a fine up to 45,000 euros.[11]
Israel[edit]
Barak-Erez and Scharia identify Israel as belonging to the European tradition, in part because of its legal system's origins in British law.[12]
The Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, enacted in 1948, remains in force, and was for many years the primary provision criminalizing incitement to terrorism. This ordinance empowers the government to designate terrorist organizations and criminalizes being a member of or supporting such a group.[13] Section 4 of the ordinance states that:
Conflict with free speech[edit]
Incitement to terrorism offenses are considered by some to be an unjustified infringement of free speech rights, and it is argued that general encouragement of terrorism may be a political statement rather than literal encouragement to commit terrorist offenses.[23] However, some advocates of criminalization, such as Yaël Ronen, believe that it is possible and desirable to criminalize a definition of incitement to terrorism which does not excessively infringe freedom of speech.[24]