356 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 1 / 2013 illegal trade of all types, extortionate practices, robberies, attacks and (paid) killings, labour and sexual exploitation, frauds and swindles, unlawful financial services, etc. Secondly, such lucrative activities are usually complemented by some acts that are not always remunerated, which perform significant facilitating or protective functions: essentially corruption, violence and money laundering6. In turn, the term “terrorism” tends to designate a particular type of violent activity: although, by extension, it is frequently used to refer to those individuals, groups and organisations that systematically practice it. Above all, what distinguishes acts of terrorism from other types of violent action is their capacity to provoke an intense social or psychological impact (anxiety or fear) that is disproportionate with respect to the physical damage caused to the people or objects chosen as targets of the aggression7. As has already been indicated, most of the groups and organisations that resort to terrorism do so being encouraged by the argument of conditioning the attitudes and the form of behaviour of governments or of political communities. For this reason, and in accordance with numerous institutional and academic definitions, all of our references to terrorist activities and entities will correspond to cases that include an exclusively political motivation or that ties together politics and religion8. During recent decades, organised criminality has undergone an intense process of trans-nationalisation, which is the result of three trends that have been developed: a substantial increase in cooperation between criminal groups and organisations with a different location; the emergence of various unlawful global markets, with some business stages distributed in different regions of the world (the best example is provided by the worldwide trade in drugs); and the appearance of criminal organisations with an active presence or implementation on an international scale9. Albeit with less generality than that corresponding to the transnational development of organised criminality, the evolution of terrorism in the XX century has also created its particular patterns of trans-nationalisation. The accumulated evidence indicates that these patterns have thrown up quite a few connections with the world of organised crime. Nevertheless, this analysis will only be concerned with the criminal 6 DE LA CORTE and GIMÉNEZ-SALINAS, op. cit., pp. 319-340. 7 This definition is inspired by the parameters set out by diverse studies such as: REINARES, Fernando, Terrorismo y antiterrorismo Terrorism and anti-terrorism”, Barcelona, Paidós, 1998; DE LA CORTE, Luis, La lógica del terrorismo “The logic of terrorism”, Madrid, Alianza, 2006; Transnational Terrorism, Security, and the Rule of Law, Defining Terrorism , Brussels, 2008. Available at: http://www.transnationalterrorism.eu/tekst/publications/WP3%20Del%204.pdf 8 A similar option when it comes to deal with the subject of this research can be found at BOVENKERK, Frank y CHAKRA, Bashir Abou, “Terrorism and organized crime”, UNODC Forum on Crime and Society, 2004, vol. 4, nº 1 and 2, pp. 3-16; WILLKINSON, Paul, Political Terrorism, Nueva York, Willey, 1974. 9 UNODC. A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODOC, Vienna, 2010.
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