609) Terrorism Old And New Counterterrorism In Canada by Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Jean-Paul Brodeur

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) conducted a series of attacks on various targets in the beginning of the 1980s. Its overall goal was the independence of Armenia from Turkey and it targeted Turkish diplomats in Canada, newspapers felt to be unsympathetic to its cause, and other Armenians who questioned its approach or refused to fund it when asked. In May 1982 a bomb placed in an Air Canada freight terminal in Los Angeles was defused 15 minutes before it was timed to explode. It was meant as retaliation for the arrest of Armenian extremists in Canada some weeks earlier. The Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide (JCAG) assas-sinated a Turkish diplomat in Canada in August 1982. In 1985 three ASALA gunmen invaded the Turkish embassy in Ottawa, killing a security guard and holding the build-ing for four hours. Two weeks after their arrest ASALA sent a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) threatening to blow up the Toronto subway if the trio was not released from custody. The Montreal RCMP office received the same threat to the Montreal Métro.

The paper starts with a new typology of terrorist acts based on a database of Canadian inci-dents. Terrorism is classified according to the scope of the stated objectives and the justifi-cation given for the acts committed. The typology is then used to extract the essential characteristics of different forms of terrorism and to explore the kinds of counterterrorist strategies which are most likely to be effective against each. Special attention is given to so-called ‘new’ terrorism and the best strategies to prevent or repress it.

Keywords: Terrorism; Counterterrorism; Canada; Typology of Terrorism; Policing . .

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Terrorism Old And New Counterterrorism In Canada Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Jean-Paul Brodeur

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