From contestation to conviction: terrorism expertise before the courts
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | TASNIEM ANWAR,MARIEKE DE GOEDE |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12294 |
DOI: ./j ols.
ARTICLE
From contestation to conviction: terrorism
expertise before the courts
TASNIEM ANWAR MARIEKE DE GOEDE
Department of Political Science,
University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe
Achtergracht , WV, Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
Correspondingauthors
TasniemAnwar and Marieke de Goede,
Departmentof Political Science, Univer-
sityof Amsterdam, P.O. Box, NB,
Amsterdam,the Netherlands
Email:t.anwar@uva.nl;
m.degoede@uva.nl
Abstract
This article asks how terrorism expertise has been
mobilized in recent trials on terrorism financing. How
is expert knowledge concerning ongoing and complex
political situations involving alleged terrorism trans-
lated into factual evidence before a court of law? What
kind of sources do courts use in terrorism cases, and
what kind of expert knowledge is acknowledged or
ignored? Through analysis of concrete cases under the
United Kingdom (UK) Terrorism Act () and the
Dutch penal law Article Sr, we show how contested
terrorism expertise becomes ‘certified knowledge’ that
holds together as grounds for conviction before a court
of law. This article contributes to socio-legal debates on
legal knowledge in two ways.First, we analyse the every-
day, material practices of gathering, presenting, and
contesting expertise in relation to security. Second, the
article analyses new case material and a particular kind
of knowledge – namely, security knowledge and terror-
ism expertise – to identify patterns in what is deemed
relevant for the court.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of CardiffUniversity (CU)
J. Law Soc. ;:–. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols 137
138 J L S
1 INTRODUCTION: ISLAMIC STATE MONEY AND TERRORISM
EXPERTISE
In , a Dutch bus driver was sentenced to months’ imprisonment for the financing of ter-
rorism under Article Sr of Dutch penal law.The bus driver had sent money to his brother, who
was at the time in territory held by Islamic State (IS).The sentencing relied on factual descrip-
tions of the situation in Syria at the time of the incriminating money transfers, in order to show
that the defendant willingly took a risk that the money might be used for terrorism. In its judg-
ment, the court posited a number of ‘facts of general knowledge’ about the conflict in Syria and
the situation in IS-held territories, based on unnamed ‘easily accessible public sources’.Among
other things, the court asserted a clear distinction between the anti-Assad uprisings, which it
acknowledged as the beginning of the conflict in Syria, and the crimes of ‘jihadist groups’. The
court wrote: ‘Many of the crimes of jihadist groups had no relation at all to the battle against
Assad’s army, but arose from a religiously-motivated desire to violently impose a radical version
of sharia on the population.’The court presented its understanding of the Syrian conflict as
apparent to ‘anyone who follows the news even just little a bit’.The -page judgment includes
only a few source referencesand does not engage in cross-checking of facts. Nevertheless, this
supposedly common knowledge of the Syrian conflict was accepted as truth by the court and
helped to prove that the bus driver should have known that the money could or would be used for
terrorism.
This article asks how knowledge concerning ongoing, fluid, and complex political situations
involving terrorist activities is rendered into factual evidence that holds together before a court
of law. For example, in the case of the bus driver’s conviction, it is possible to ask how the court
was able to arrive at this factual assessment of a conflict that is complex, involving many armed
groups and fluid frontlines, when the nature and characterization of the conflict are still fiercely
debated by academics and experts.In this article, we ask what kind of sources courts use in
terrorism cases, and we focus on what kind of expert knowledge is acknowledged, referenced,
excluded, or ignored in terrorismcases. These questions are important because, as Jasanoff argues,
conventional legal scholarship ‘offers relatively few resources for understanding what makes,
He was sentenced on March to months’ imprisonment, of which months were suspended with a probation
time of three years. Gerechtshof Den Haag, ECLI:NL:GHDHA::. In the Netherlands, the standard wayto refer to
court cases is by their European Case Law Identifier (ECLI)and the location of the court. For the readability of the article,
we have chosen to cite the ECLI in the footnotes and refer in-text to the location of the court.
Id. All translations from the Dutch are our own.
Id.
Id.
The sources cited in the footnotes of the judgment includes non-governmental organization (NGO) reports, newspaper
articles, and a report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.
An extended discussion of the definition of the offence in statute is presented later in this article.
See, for example, the recent debate in the Dutch parliament that involvedseveral experts discussing the status of different
armed groups fighting in Syria: see Commissie Buitenlandse Zaken, ‘NederlandseSteun aan Gewapende SyrischeOpposi-
tie’ Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, September , at <https://www.tweedekamer.nl/debat_en_vergadering/
commissievergaderingen/details?id=A>. See also I. Rothkopf,‘International Humanitarian Law and Non-State
Practice in Armed Conflict: Combatant’s Privilege and KurdishF ightersin Syria’ () J. of Conflict and Security Law
; N. Ryder, ‘Out with the Old and ... In with the Old? A Critical Review of the Financial War on Terrorism on the
Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’ () Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
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