USA v. Hammoud et al: A Lesson on Auditing Group Cases Sara Godfrey On February 25, 2003, Mohamad Youssef Hammoud was sentenced to 1,860 months in prison, constituting the first conviction under a 1996 federal law prohibiting aid to designated terrorist groups. 1 Facing in prison 155 years on charges including, Trafficking Contraband Cigarettes (18:2342.f […]
Tactic and Target Selection in White Supremacist versus Eco-Terrorist Organizations Izzy Bielamowicz Without proper distinction between separate ideological affiliations, terrorism becomes an oversimplified subset of political violence. This lack of differentiation within the subject of terrorism runs the risk of creating a false synonymy between different groups. While some organizations may have distinct similarities, there […]
What is Terrorism? The Defining Elements of an Evolving Concept Morgan Demboski Government officials, law enforcement, and scholars have long struggled to come up with an internationally accepted definition of terrorism. The term is a very ambiguous one – what is terrorism and who is a terrorist depends entirely on the subjective view of the […]
A Tweet as a Deadly Weapon: The State of Texas v. John Rayne Rivello Nitya Sunil Last Spring semester, while working on coding cases, I came across a case with characteristics that would determine prosecution for many future cases. The State of Texas v. John Rayne Rivello determines whether a tweet, or any message-sending medium utilized on […]
Locating Extremists Where They Strike: The Influence of Ideology and Geography on Terrorist Target Selection Isabel Bielamowicz and Kayla Groneck This is a brief summary of a 14-week research project we designed and carried out, the purpose of which was to identify the relationships between geographic location, ideological affiliation, and physical target for cases of […]
How Childhood Experiences Shape Belief Systems: Psychology behind the Ritchie case Megan Roques (@meganroques) When coding cases, we examine multiple cases with various motivations in order to determine if they fit the inclusion criteria. Lately, most of the cases that I have found have been the result of scraping documents and databases. Therefore, coding these […]
Deportation Station: What Makes a Guilty Defendant More Likely to be Deported? Zoe Belford This is a brief summary of a 14-week research project I designed and carried out, assessing what conditions lead to an increased likelihood of deportation following a guilty verdict in a United States terrorism prosecution, as well as if and how […]
The Process and Difficulties of Coding the Twenty-Year Old 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings Case Sara Godfrey On August 7th, 1998, trucks armed with explosives simultaneously detonated outside U.S. embassies in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, bringing public attention for many to al-Qaeda for the first time. The explosions killed 224 people and injured […]
Freedom of Information Act or Freedom to Pay for Information Act? Morgan Demboski When researching cases for the project, court documents are the jackpot of source files. I always feel a tiny bit of excitement when I am able to find a free indictment or plea document online. However, I think my excitement stems from […]
Far-Right Extremist Use of Bitcoin and Dark Web Platforms: The Dark Network Links of tPP Cases Meg Drown There has been a mass movement by far-right extremists to dark web social media platforms and an increased use of cryptocurrencies as a means to crowdsource. This move has largely been due to the initiatives of big […]