Acts of War or Acts of Terrorism?
| Date | 01 August 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1350/1740-5580-76.4.298 |
| Published date | 01 August 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
Acts of War or Acts of Terrorism?
R vGul [2012] EWCA Crim 280
Keywords Terrorism; Dissemination; Publication; International law;
Law of armed conflict
Mohammed Gul, a 24-year-old Libyan-born British citizen, uploaded
several videos to the internet which depicted attacks by insurgents
against Coalition forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to
footage which showed similar attacks against Russian forces operating in
the Russian Republic of Chechnya and against Israeli Forces operating
in Gaza. He was arrested in February 2009 when British police executed
a search warrant at his home and discovered the material which had
already been uploaded to the internet. He was charged with disseminat-
ing terrorist material contrary to s. 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006, but at his
first trial the jury was unable to agree a verdict on some counts and
found him not guilty on others. Gul was again charged with six counts
of disseminating terrorist publications in 2008–09 contrary to s. 2 of the
Terrorism Act 2006 and faced a second trial in early 2011. It was at this
trial that he was found guilty on five of the six counts on the indictment
and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
At trial the defendant had argued that he had not disseminated
terrorist publications because the attacks committed against the Coali-
tion forces by the insurgents could not in themselves have been re-
garded as acts of terrorism. Instead, they should have been seen as
legitimate acts of self-defence as the insurgents were resisting the inva-
sion of their country by foreign troops. As such, because the attacks were
not acts of terrorism, the material depicting the attacks could not logic-
ally be considered acts of terrorism. Furthermore, the attacks depicted in
the videos were attacks against Coalition forces and not civilians, which
the defendant claimed proved further that the attacks were not acts of
terror. The Crown contended that the footage did indeed depict acts of
terrorism as defined under s. 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 with the
section allowing for no exceptions to the use of force by insurgents
against the military of the UK or of any foreign government. On this
basis therefore the defendant was to be found guilty of disseminating
terrorist material.
In their deliberations the jury sought clarification on a number of
points by posing a series of questions to the trial judge. Amongst these
were: (1) whether attacks by insurgents against Coalition forces consti-
tuted acts of terrorism; (2) whether the use of force by Coalition forces
constituted acts of terrorism; and (3) if there was no armed conflict in
existence in Iraq or Afghanistan could the insurgents be entitled to
‘combatant immunity’ for what would otherwise be acts of terrorism.
Answering the first of these questions, the trial judge said that there was
an argument that if an armed conflict existed, then the attacks by the
insurgents against Coalition forces might not constitute an act of terror-
ism. With regard to (2), the judge noted that the use of force by Coalition
The Journal of Criminal Law
298
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