Terrorism offence

• Author: Prof.dr. Ioan Chis
• Position: Catedra de drept penal cei procedure penale Facultatea de drept, Universitatea Nicolae Titulescu

Legal content, pre-existent circumstances, constitutive content, forms, manners ans punitive sanctions

It might seeem surprising for us to assert that one cannot formulate an exhaustive definition of terrorism. We could afirm that whatever the terrorist performs can be denominated as terrorism, but that would determine us to think about many other cocepts which do not have the semantic power to define a terrorist. There are many attempts, in this respect, and that is why I shall try not to reiterate any definition from the doctrine, but to quote article no.1 from the text of the law no.535 / 25th of November 2004 regarding the prevention of and the fighting against terrorism, text which displays the fact that: "Terrorism represents the sum of actions and / or threats which constitute public enemy and affects national security and has the following characteristics:

1. these actions are performed with malice prepense by terrorist entities, motivated by extremist attitudes and conceptions, hostile to other entitites, against which they act violently and destructively;

2. their goal is to achieve objectives of political nature;

3. they aim at human and / or material factors from public authorities and institutions, civil population and other parts appertaining to them;

4. they produce states of mind with powerful psychological impact against the population, a fact which is meant to emphasize the purposes the terrorists aim at."

Terrorism, as a phenomenon, can only be materialized with the help of acts of terrorism, which, accordind to the Penal Code, art.no.295, are defined as follows: :"The following offences are considered acts of terrorism, if they are committed in order to gravely disturb public order, by creating intimidation, terror or states of panic"

We shall notice / observe that the list of the terrorist acts bares the shape of common offences such as:

-offences of manslaughter and premeditated manslaughter; -hurting and grave corporal wounding; -illegal loss of liberty;

-performing civil aerian operations without authorization or licence, if the deed endangers the safety of the flight, public health or the environmental protection;

-carrying on activities within the perimeter of the airport infrastructure, without authorization or licence, by artificial persons, if the deed endangers the safety of the flight;

-communicating information, knowing that it is false, if the deed endangers the safety of the flight or if it deviates the route of the flight;

-illegal use of any device, weapon or substance aiming at producing an act of violence against a person serving the civil aviation;

-commiting any act of physical or pshychical violence against a person on a flying or ready to fly airship;

-placing or using any device, substance or weapon to destroy or badly deteriorate the endowments belonging to the airport or to an airship out of service which is on the airport;

-suspending the services of the airport, if he deed endangers its safety; -destroying or badly deteriorating the instalations and the equipment destined to protect the aerian navigation or disturbing, in any manner, the functionability of the aerian navigation services, if the deed is meant to endanger the safety of the flight;

-destroying or deteriorating a functionable airship so that it can be made unable to fly or endanger its flight safety;

-placing or helping to place, by any means, a device, a weapon or a substance on the board of an airship so that it can be destroyed or one can produce damages to it, which makes it unable to fly or endangers the safety of the flight;

-destroying, degrading or rendering unemployment to a good belonging to other or preventing the taking of the measure to conserve or save such a good, and obviation of the measures taken previously as well as in the case when the good has a special artistic, scientific, historic, archivistic or a similar value;

-destroying, degrading or rendering unemployment of a petrolium or gas pipe, of a high tension cable, of the equipment or instalations of telecommunication or of broadcasting radio or television programs, or of the water supply systems and the water main supplies;

-partial or total destruction of an authentic act or under private signature which does not belong or exclusively belong to the doer or hiding an act which does not belong to the doer with the purpose of provoking a damage to a person;

-destroying or degrading terminals, marks, level marks or geodesic signs of the national network, placed on soil or buildings, or destroying terminals, pillars, landmarks or other signs which mark the state frontiere or preventing the taking of the measures to conserve them;

-if the destruction, degradation or rendering unemployment is committed through setting fire, explosion or a similar means and if public danger is a result of this, even though the goods belong to the doer;

-if the destruction had severe consequences or provoked a disaster (disaster consists in the destruction or the degrading of public transportation, of human or material transportation, of some instalations or works and which had as a consequence the death or the severe wounding of the corporal integrity or the health...