EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

European Journal of Social Sciences - Volume 2, Number 1 (2006)
quest for an effective counter-terrorist strategy, the role and the reaction of the public is extremely
important (Crenshaw, 2001, pp.334-5, Veness, 2001, pp. 407-416).
The public can be proved a valuable asset in fighting terrorism, because by being educated on
terrorism and on the terrorist tools, it can speed up the police work on counter-terrorism issues. By the
same token, and if the public and the security forces co-operate in the fight against terrorism, it
becomes much more difficult for the terrorists to gain the amount of widespread support necessary for
their ‘messages’ to gain recognition. In that way, the terrorist groups are left in the dark, in the sense
that the public disregards their actions.
If we accept the conclusion that analysts of terrorist activity have reached during the latter part
of the twentieth century, that successful terrorists want “to impress, to play to and for an audience” and
to “attract the attention of the electronic media and the international press” (Hoffman, 1998, p. 131),
then we would also agree with the consensus among counter-terrorism experts and academics that
terrorists wanted more people watching than dead. In other words, the publicity of terrorist actions was
by itself able to generate enormous amount of fear in a domestic or even in an international audience,
something that enabled terrorist groups to maximise their political gains and to be successful in
generating great psychological pressure to that particular audience. In addition, such terrorist actions
would also contribute to the erosion of the public’s confidence in the state’s ability to protect them
from acts of terror. In order to reverse that situation in favour of the state, counter-terrorism attempts
had to re-evaluate the role of the public opinion. As such, public co-operation with the security services
in preventing terrorist actions can actually be an important counter-terrorist tool.
As a concluding remark, it can be argued that the European counter-terrorist tradition on
domestic terrorism is characterised by upholding of the rule of law and by the presence of police as the
main counter-terrorism agency. Cultural elements in the European political and social tradition favour
the procedural priorities within the government and the intelligence community, in the form of
evaluating the different courses of action and accepting the most desirable one in terms of both
viability and success. In reality, counter-terrorism attempts in Europe are the direct result of political
will, and as such, politics can influence the character and the nature of the extent in which terrorism
can be countered.
The question that is now raised is related to the role, the extent and the form in which
international co-operation can provide an adequate and successful help in countering incidents of
domestic terrorism. The next chapter will be an attempt to provide an answer to that question.
5. International cooperation in countering domestic terrorism
In the course of domestic Western European terrorist activity from 1970’s onwards, the examples of
international co-operation in counter-terrorism attempts have been insignificant. The reason for that, as
outlined in chapter two, was the peculiar nature of indigenous terrorist groups and the suspicion
between security agencies that act as restrains in any such attempt. When it came to coping with
terrorism, West European countries preferred to work on a single national basis. In that sense, political
constrains such as national and economic considerations or even nationalist reservations called for a
single-handed national rather than international approach to the matter.
In that area, the example of France is a notable one: the country has a long record of unwilling
co-operation with its neighbours in extraditing wanted terrorists and more importantly, in exchanging
intelligence information with the security agencies of other countries. Perhaps the best example of the
French approach on international co-operation on countering terrorism, is the case of Odrief Hepp, a
German national that was arrested in Paris in 1987 on suspicion of operating on behalf of a Palestinian
terrorist group: German counter-terrorists officers remained in the dark for several months, as their
French counterparts wanted to conclude their own investigation before presenting Hepp or any of the
material found in his hideout to them. Germany, on the other hand, even when it experienced
difficulties in coping with national or international terrorist groups operating in its soil (such as RAF or
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