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To celebrate ICCT’s ten year anniversary, we are looking for papers for a special edition of The ICCT Journal. We are looking for unique insights from all disciplines into the future of terrorism and terrorist groups. Submissions should be in the form of Research Papers. 6,000 – 10,000 words. Deadline for submission is Monday 24 […]

ICCT Director Renske van der Veer in Nieuwsuur on Europol’s removal of IS channels from Telegram. See the video interview here.

This policy brief provides an overview of the sociological issues underpinning the issues of far right and Islamist reciprocal or cumulative radicalisation in the Western European context. That is, these groups radicalise each other by mutually reinforcing their hate, intolerance, or indignation towards each other. The nature of reciprocal radicalisation between far right and Islamist […]

Writing in 1992, noted terrorism scholar David Rapoport remarked that nearly 90% of terrorist groups lasted less than one year. Subsequent scholarship on terrorist group longevity has similarly noted the short average lifespan of the vast majority of such groups.  Why then—more than three decades after it was originally founded—has al-Qaeda been able to enjoy […]

Introduction In the past months, there has been considerable discussion about whether or not foreign fighters and their families currently detained in camps in Syria should be repatriated. An often-heard justification in Western Europe not to opt for repatriation is the fact that prosecution of the adults will often lead to light sentences and thus […]

On December 9 2019, The United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) launched a new publication called Guidelines to facilitate the use and admissibility as evidence in national criminal courts of information collected, handled, preserved and shared by the military to prosecute terrorist offences (“Military Evidence”). The guidelines were developed by UNCTED together […]

Terrorists are and have always been children of their time – like you and me. We increasingly make use of modern technology, whether it is by ordering groceries through an app or reading articles selected through artificial intelligence (AI). These benefits come with a downside: those with bad intentions might use these technologies as well. […]

Collecting data on the number of terrorist attacks is a delicate task. The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) developed a baseline Terrorism Threat Assessment. This assessment used open source data to present an assessment of terrorism in 32 countries across four categories: (1) Terrorist Attacks, (2) (Returning) Foreign Terrorist Fighters (RFTF), (3) […]

Introduction Academic research began to focus specifically on terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, although it would take until the 9/11 attacks before the burgeoning field took on its current form and significantly increased output. From those early days in the mid-to-late twentieth century onwards, terrorism research has had a distinctly applied focus, with a […]

Introduction In Syria and Iraq, the general consensus is that Islamic State (IS) has been militarily defeated, but the terror group is now popping up elsewhere and breathing new life into its global caliphate. In an April 29 video, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi mentioned that pledges of allegiance from the Khorasan region had been […]