145

p Half of all the acts of terrorism committed in the 70s, occurred in Western Europe, as we have already said. It is in the capitalist countries of Europe that the major terrorist organisations are operating. Let us have a look at some of them.

p The Coordinating Centre of Aginter Press was set up in Lisbon in 1953. In 1956, two lines became distinct in its activity: propaganda and outright terrorism (“armed struggle against international Communism”).

p At the present time, Aginter Press has its headquarters in Spain and maintains contact with Ordine nuovo (New 146 Order), Avanguardia nazionale, the neofasrist Italian Social Movement and other groups of this kind in Italy; tin: neo-Nazis in West Germany; the National Front of Andrew Fountaine, a fascist, and the Monday Club (right-wing Conservatives) in Britain; the extreme right-wing Occident organisation and the National Front in France; the fascist organisations of Luis Garcia Rodriguez and right-wing Catholics in Spain, along with neo-fascist centres in Barcelona and Madrid; and Jeune Europe (Young Europe) and Nouvel Ordre Europeen (New European Order) in Belgium and Switzerland.

p The Lausanne-ba,sed Nouvel Ordre Europeen (NOE) Centre was founded in 1951 and comprises the French Action europeenne organisation, extremists of the Italian Social Movement, the Spanish Circle of the Friends of Europe, and the Greek 4th of August Movement, to mention just a few.

p The Munich Centre includes neo-Nazi groups of West Germany and some renegades from socialist countries and is closely connected with Radio Free Europe.

p The World Union of National Socialists is a neoNazi organisation operating in France, West Germany, Great Britain and in countries of Latin America.

p The World Anti-Communist League, founded in 1961, is headed by Raimondo Guerrero, a Mexican fascist. The League has extensive connections with a number of kindred organisations of Latin America, and is in close contact with the Munich Centre, Ukrainian nationalists, National Labour Union, and the secret services of the United States, West Germany and Switzerland.

p With the fascist regime brought down in Portugal and Spain taking up the road to political democracy, Aginter 147 Press has run into certain difficulties, and the leading role in coordinating the activities of pro-fascist organisations has passed to the Paladin organisation with headquarters at Alicante. According to Western press reports, this organisation has its blanch offices in Paris, Rome, Zurich, Lisbon, and Munich and keeps large amounts of money on its current accounts. Most of these assets have been in banks since the days of the Hitler Reich and are part of the Bormann Foundation. The Paladin is directed by former Nazis, Gerhard Hartmut von Schubert and Johann von Leers.

p There are, besides, a number of Jeftist groups commiitted to terrorism in Western Europe. For the most part, their members are young people under 30, coming from the petty bourgeoisie and middle classes (only an insignificant proportion are workers’ children). Some of them have worked at industrial enterprises for a short time. Their programmes are a rather limited set of high-flowing “revolutionary phrases”, while their actions are of a piece with those of profascist groups.

p These are, above all, the Red Brigades of Italy, Worker Autonomy, Proletarian Armed Cells, Armed Workers for Communism, Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany. Their common practice to procure their means of subsistence is by looting jewelry shops or banks or kidnapping relatives of rich people to get a ransom for them. For instance, in Italy they kidnapped 250 people from 1970 to 1976, having obtained an aggregate ransom of something like 50 billion lire for them.

p However, for all the high-sounding phraseology, the aim of such leftist groups is to destabilise the situation which the rightists seek to exploit to lash out against left forces and democracy. Here is a case in point. The actions of the 148 terrorist RAF organisation in West Germany did much to bring about emergency legislation and decrees on extremist control which stimulated the fight against left forces, the hounding of Communists and the instigation of anti-communist feeling.

p The Italian Ilindscita, weekly said that “terrorism is the armed hand of the crisis against the organised working-class movement, which means that this movement has to defend itsi-lf against such an enemy".  [148•1 

p The Espresso magazine reported that NATO had long since worked out plans for armed intervention codenamed Atlantida to be carried out in the event of “emergency circumstances" arising in Italy.

p Attempts to destabilise the domestic situation in various countries through terror are undertaken by secret services just when there is a steep rise of the influence of the Communist and working-class movement. However, Washington is all the time trying to blame terrorism on the socialist countries, going as far as to claim that West European terrorists are “trained” in Eastern Europe.

p In the spring of 1978, for instance, the Italian La Domenica del Corriere newspaper asserted that the West German terrorist, Hans Joachim Klein had been trained for sabotage operations in a special camp in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, together with other Italian, Spanish and German terrorists.  [148•2  Now, the // Borghese magazine even claimed that the world centre of the Red Brigades was located in Prague.  [148•3  Of course there was no evidence at all offered 149 to support that claim. The Czechoslovak RudePravo, rejecting that piece of slander, rightfully noted that the authors of such absurd insinuations “want to line their coat at somebody’s expense, divert attention .. . and slander socialist countries as if they, rather than anybody else, were responsible for Italian terrorism."  [149•1 

p It was not by chance that after the assassination of Moro Italian Communists should have been accused by reactionaries of having connections with the “Red Brigades".

p In an effort to stem the wave of terrorism through improvements in legal machinery and in the performance of the police force, the governments of Great Britain, West Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Austria set up special commandotype anti-terrorist groups. The West German unit, consisting of carefully selected and trained volunteers, is believed to be the best anti-terrorist squad. It is using most up-todate equipment and is a highly mobile group. The abduction and murder of Schleyer and Moro induced West European states to step up cooperation in the fight against terrorists. In April 1978, the nine Common Market countries as well as Austria and Switzerland reached an agreement on pooling their resources to this end. France acceded to the agreement in September 1978.

p One thing produced through the legal cooperation of West European states was the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism signed at Strasbourg on January 27, 1977. The Convention consisted of a preamble and 16 Articles.  [149•2  As stated in the preamble, the purpose of the 150 Convention was to take effective measures to ensure that the perpetrators of acts of terrorism did not escape prosecution and punishment. It was stressed, furthermore, that extradition was a particularly effective measure for achieving this result. This Convention, as can be seen from Art. 1, does not regard the following offences as a political offence or as an offence connected with a political offence or as an offence inspired by political motives: 

p —an offence within the scope of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, signed at The Hague on December 16, 1970; 

p —an offence within the scope of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation, signed at Montreal on September 23, 1971; 

p —a serious offence involving an attack against the life, physical integrity or liberty of internationally protected persons, including diplomatic agents;  [150•1 

p —an offence involving kidnapping, the taking of a hostage or serious unlawful detention; 

p —an offence involving the use of a bomb, grenade, rocket, automatic firearm or letter- or parcel-bomb if this use endangers persons; 

p —an attempt to commit any of the foregoing offences or participation as an accomplice of a person who commits or attempts to commit such an offence.

151

p Analysing the afore-mentioned corpa delicti falling within this Convention, one should make the following observation: the Convention offers but a loose definition of the offences, which leaves it open to arbitrary application, notably, against democratic forces. This drawback is materially compounded by Art. 2 whereby for the purposes of extradition, a Contracting State may decide not to regard as a political offence or as an offence connected with a political offence or as an offence inspired by political motives, a serious offence involving an act of violence, against the life, physical integrity or liberty of a person, an act against property, if this act created a collective danger for persons, and also an attempt to commit any of the foregoing offences or participation as an accomplice of a person who commits or attempts to commit such an offence. All these are over and above the acts covered in Art. 1.

p Art. 3 demands a modification of all extradition treaties and arrangements applicable between Contracting States, including the European Convention on Extradition, to the extent that they are incompatible with this Convention.

p This provision of the Convention is, as a matter of fact, contrary to the principles of participation by European states in a whole series of international Conventions concluded with a view to suppressing all kinds of terrorist acts of international significance. It is not by chance that the extradition provision of the present Convention operates only between the five signatory States (West Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Spain, Liechtenstein), while a further five States have ratified the Convention with reservations ( Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Cyprus). Ireland’s position is a clearer reflection of the drawbacks of the Convention. Ireland refused to sign it at all on the ground that to 152 do so would infringe the "generally recognised principles of international law".  [152•1 

p It should be added that the wave of terrorism that has swept across the nations of Europe has been connected with the activities of national and international neofascist and the so-called “left" extremist terrorist organisations. However, the Convention does not envisage any cooperation of the signatory States in the suppression of the terrorist activities of the above-mentioned organisations which is, beyond doubt, a serious drawback from the standpoint of its effectiveness. Art. 5 comes into conflict with the provisions of Art. 1 and 2, by stipulating that none of the provisions of the Convention shall be interpreted as imposing an obligation to extradite if the requested State has substantial grounds for believing that the request for extradition has been made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing a person on account of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion, or that that person’s position may be prejudiced for any of these reasons. That is to say that the issue of application of the given Convention in the particular situation is left, in virtue of Art. 5 as it is worded, practically at the discretion of the State concerned. It is just as indisputable that fascism and neofascism are political movements which are now taking on the form of terrorist action against democratic movements and statesmen of the capitalist countries of Western Europe.

p In these circumstances, it is difficult to view the 153 conclusion of the European Convention as a positive step in the legal cooperation of States in action to suppress terrorist acts of international significance as it is not an adequately elaborated document with a view to standardising the principles of national law to prevent and punish terrorist acts of an international character.

p Art. 7 formulates the principle of “extradite or prosecute”, which further complicates the consistent effective application of the Convention since the previous Articles lay emphasis on extradition. Art. 8 stipulates the obligation of the States in connection with mutual assistance in criminal matters and proceedings with regard to the offences falling within the Convention.

p Arts. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 16 regulate the questions of mutual information and settlement of disputes arising from interpretation or application of the Convention, the procedure of signing, ratifying and putting it into effect, the procedure and application of reservations made by States with regard to the various provisions of the Convention as well as the process of denunciation. Under Art. 15, the Convention shall cease to have effect in respect of any State which withdraws from or ceases to be a Member of the Council of Europe.

p One major point to note in giving a general assessment of the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism is that this Convention is not a treaty on the extradition of criminals or a treaty on mutual assistance in criminal matteis It is general international extradition or mutual assistance agreements that remain the basic documents for extradition or mutual assistance in criminal matters, or the principle of reciprocity in their absence. However, Arts. 3 and 8 of the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism 154 contain a provision whereby extradition or assistance in criminal matters may not be denied on the grounds that the crime is of a political character.

p Speaking at the 1980 Strasbourg Conference on "Defence of Democracy against Terrorism in Europe: Tasks and Problems,” the Principal Legal Officer in the Austrian Ministry of Justice, Robert Linke said, criticising the Convention, that the solution it offered was an oversimplification of the problem as it denied the political character of the offence under all circumstances.  [154•1  A similar view was expressed by Paul Wilkinson, Professor of Intel national Relations, Britain.  [154•2 

p A former Italian Minister of Justice, Senator Francesco Paolo Bonifacio, in a paper “Limitation of Individual Rights in the Fight against Terrorism" held that no anti-democratic legislation should be passed even in the face of terrorist acts committed. Italian experience has proved that, he stressed. Furthermore, Bonifacio, with reliance on the guarantees of political asylum, found it necessary to produce such an interpretation of the defensive function of the extradition ban as would contain clear restrictions.  [154•3 

p It should be noted that the Convention does contain some provisions permitting a State to refuse to extradite a terrorist by referring to the political character of the offence which would, of course, weaken the effort of nations in the 155 suppression of terrorism. However, the main thing is that the Convention does not draw any line of distinction between a terrorist act of international significance and a terrorist act of a domestic character, and that makes cooperation extremely difficult, involving different national systems in the fight against criminal offences in general, which hampers identical solutions and may bring all kinds of abuse in its train.

There have been rather critical reactions to the European Convention from public opinion in European countries, notably, from some lawyers. In particular, a Convention to protect the right of asylum has been produced in France as an act of protest. Well-known Belgian lawyer Jean Salmon considers that Art. 1 of the Convention can be applied to anybody: a spy, a hangman, or an entirely innocent civilian, and that the text of the Convention does not correspond at all to the objectives proclaimed therein. The Convention, in Salmon’s opinion, is aimed essentially not so much at fighting international terrorism as at opposing internal political violence. The Convention resuscitates the spirit of the Holy Alliance, that of intervention in the internal affairs of nations, and contradicts the principles of non-intervention and self-determination. Nationals of the signatory countries can face a trial or lose the right of political asylum for an indefinitely interpreted complicity. Any political opponent of an existing regime, who has committed no act of violence whatsoever, can be declared an accessory and prosecuted for terrorist activity.  [155•1  In a wider sense, the Convention has become 156 an expression of the "order and freedom" conception which is gaining currency and being institutionalised in the West as the so-called "security doctrine”. The Convention has become the foundation for the West European criminal law although, technically, it has an international legal aspect.