Should terrorists and wannabe terrorists be executed or imprisoned for a very long time?

In 1985, I was invited to give an address at the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders which was being held in Milan, Italy in September of that year. My speech was on the subject of terrorism and what should be done to terrorists when they are caught.

I was nervous, not because I was addressing 125 governments, 58 non governmental organizations like Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, the Vatican, etc., and 1,395 individual experts (since I had addressed two previous Congresses in the past—1975 and 1980) but because I was going to be making recommendations with respect to sentences that far exceeded what the previous speakers were advocating be given to terrorists.

I was sick and tired of reading about terrorists who indiscriminately planted bombs on buses and in schools and murdered innocent men, women, children and even babies just so that these terrorists could die as martyrs and be greeted in heaven by 72 virgins.

The day before I was to give my address, I handed out copies of my speech to the news media that were in the conference centre but they didn’t seem that interested in reading it. After all, I was not a delegate speaking for a particular country. I was only one of the few experts that the UN invited to express our own opinions on the various topics under discussion during that conference.

They didn’t realize that although invited experts cannot vote in these conferences, they can influence the voting of the delegates, such as when I proposed a bill of rights for young offenders in the 1980 UN Congress held in Caracas in which the delegates in the 1985 UN Congress were now voting on my proposal and which was later accepted by them in September and passed by the UN General Assembly two months later.

What did surprise me however was that I was to give my speech from the podium rather than from my desk on the main floor. I have addressed the UN Congresses around the world twenty-five times since 1975 and only twice have I been invited to give my address from the podium since only ministers in the governments are the ones that give their speeches from the podiums.

I later learned that it was the Italian army that asked the chairman of the session to invite me to speak from the podium and the reason for this was that a television camera was placed on the floor facing the podium and it was the wish of the Italian government to have my speech televised in its 10-minute entirety so that it could be broadcasted on television all over Italy that night. It was broadcasted that night however the voice over mine was in Italian.

In my speech, I recommended the sentence of death be given to any terrorist who built, planted or caused an explosive device to be set to explode or used a firearm and actually caused death to a human being or seriously maimed a human being.

Further, I recommended a sentence of life in prison without parole for any terrorist who built, planted or set an explosive device to explode or used a firearm in which neither caused the death of a human being or seriously maimed a human being.

I also recommended that any terrorist who advocates building or planting an explosive device in a place where innocent persons can be killed or maimed but such a device is not actually built, planted or set to explode, or any terrorist advocated murdering innocent people with firearms be sentenced to prison for a minimum of 25 years.

With respect to those terrorists who murder their victims, I made the following recommendations:

1. All the witnesses be gathered up and placed in the finest hotels under guard and questioned immediately.
2. Their statements be compiled by the investigators and and turned over to the prosecutors within 14 days.
3. The trials of the terrorists commence on the third week.
4. All the terrorists who are convicted should automatically be sentenced to death.
5. The Supreme Court of the country in which the terrorists are tried should drop everything and concentrate on the transcripts of the trials of the terrorists.
6. If they are convinced that the trials were conducted fairly and they are satisfied with the testimony of the witnesses, they should confirm the death sentences.
7. The death sentences should be carried out withing 24 hours of the confirmation of the Supreme Court.
8. The bodies of the terrorists should be immediately incinerated and placed in small lead containers and dumped into the nearest ocean at least 200 miles from shore so that no one can pray over their remains.

I further suggested that while the terrorists were waiting for their trials and after their convictions, the only persons that they should be in contact with are their lawyers. This meant that no family members or holy men would be permitted to see them.

My concern was that we were treating these terrorists as human beings when in fact, we should have been treating them as the animals they are. That night, my speech was shown on TV all over Italy and newspapers world-wide quoted excerpts from my speech.

Admittedly, I was a strong advocate (and I still am) for the severest punishment that humans can give other humans in a civilized world but when you consider what these animals do to human beings without any concern as to how the families of the victims will feel when they learned that their loved ones have been blown to bits or shot to death by the terrorists, I was really expressing what a great many people around the world actually feel towards terrorists.

Consider what happened to the Jews when terrorists went wild.

Sep 22, 1968 - Palestinian terrorists booby trapped a car. The car exploded in the shopping market Mahen Yehuda in Jerusalem, killing 12 people and wounding 70.

May 22, 1970- Palestinian terrorists attacked a school bus at the Mosha Avivim in the Upper Galilee. 9 children, the driver and 2 other adults are killed, and 19 children are wounded.

Sept 5, 1972, Munich Massacre: Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes and one German policeman in the Munich Olympic Games.

Apr 11, 1974 - PLO terrorists attacked Kiryat Shmona, killing 8 children, 8 adults, and 2 soldiers.

May 15, 1974 - Maalot Massacre: 22 children and several adults were killed (66 children were wounded) by Palestinian terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Mar 11, 1978 - PLO terrorists seized a bus on the coastal road, killing 35 men, women, and children.

That was just in a ten-year period. There were other bombings and firearms deaths also caused by terrorists during the time frame in Israel.

There were many acts of terrorism in the United States but two come to mind that were really horrendous. They were;

1995 April 19: Oklahoma City bombing: A truck bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people-including children playing in the building's day care center. Right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted in the bombing. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection and Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2001 September 11: September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 civilians, and were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists using hijacked commercial airplanes to damage the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, ultimately destroying both 110-story skyscrapers. The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was also severely damaged. Building 7 of the World Trade Center was also destroyed, but was not hit with a plane, thus raising suspicions as to the official story. A fourth plane crashed when terrorists took control of the plane while flying over Pennsylvania. So far, no one has been sentenced as the terrorists in the planes were killed when their planes crashed although their ringleader is currently on trial.

Can any reasonable thinking individual really believe that these terrorists who committed these horrendous crimes should be shown any form of mercy? All they are entitled to is a fair trial and a quick death.

Ahmed Ressam was arrested by US Customs officials in 1999 while carrying timing devices and 130 pounds of explosives from Victoria, BC to Port Angeles, Washington. Charged with offences including transporting explosives and possessing unregistered firearms, Ressam confessed to membership in a Montreal group plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. In July 2005, Ressam was sentenced in the United States to 22 years in prison. He should have been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

US border officials arrested three American members of the militant Muslim group Jamaat ul-Fuqra in 1991. They were carrying an attack plan, a list of bomb components, and surveillance notes about a theatre and a Hindu temple in the Toronto area. Sentenced to 12 years in prison, they were released in April 2006 and deported. They should have been sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

A suitcase bomb was loaded on a plane in Vancouver, then transferred to Air India Flight 182 in Toronto. The plane crashed while en route to India, killing 329 passengers, including 279 Canadians. A second bomb, loaded on a Canadian Pacific flight from Vancouver to Bombay, killed two and injured four at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Inderjit Singh Reyat was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the bombings. He should have been executed.

In 1982, Members of Direct Action detonated a van packed with dynamite outside Litton Industries' Toronto plant, which manufactured parts for the guidance systems of US Cruise missiles. Ten people were injured; damage was estimated at $3.87 million. Direct Action issued communiques emphasizing their anti-nuclear position. Three members of the group were convicted. They were also convicted of destroying other government property by the use of bombs elsewhere in Canada. The five received sentences ranging from six years to life. All of them should have been given life in prison. As an aside, there was almost an eleventh victim. I had driven past the building and van just five minutes earlier on my way home from work.

In the summer of 2006, police carried out a massive anti-terrorism sweep in southern Ontario. Seventeen people — 13 adults and four youths — were arrested in a series of June raids. An 18th individual was detained two months later. Normally referred to as one case, the so-called Toronto 18 in fact encompassed two plots. One was a plan to bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange and other prominent buildings. The other, Gillespie says, was "the attempt to create a large al-Qaeda type cell in Toronto — to arm themselves with weapons, and then to create some sort of mayhem that would scare the Canadian public into withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. They also intended to invade parliament and sever the head of the prime minister from his body. That was unlikely to happen. Some of the accused had their charges stayed or dismissed. Those that were convicted were given sentences that ranged from two and a half years to life in prison. Those sentenced to life can apply for parole after 10 years is served with the exception of one who was given credit for some of the ten years parole eligibility while waiting for his trial while in jail. They all should have been given a minimum of twenty-five years in prison.

The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia, killing 202 people. A further 240 people were injured. The three men responsible for the bombings were later executed by firing squad.

So long as we treat terrorists or wannabe terrorists with kid gloves, they or other terrorists and wannabe terrorists will continue to plague society with their evil deeds.

At the end of my address at the UN Congress in Milan, I said the following:

“When a terrorist kills an innocent victim, that innocent person is the primary victim who suffers from the pain of death and the loss of his or her chance to enjoy life to its fullest. The secondary victims are the family and friends of the primary victims. But there are also periphery victims. We are those people who are neither the primary or secondary victims. We are victims also because when an innocent victim dies at the hands of a terrorist, a little of us within each of us, dies also.”