Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
The shock was great when a car bomb shook the Norwegian capital of Oslo on 22 July 2011 not only destroying government buildings, but also taking eight people to their deaths. However, this was only the prelude to the horrors that unfolded almost thirty kilometers away. There, on the resort island of Utøya, sixty-nine participants of a Young Socialists summer camp were shot dead. Based on our current understanding of events, all these acts can be attributed to one single person who believed himself to be fighting an ideological battle against the supposed evil. Before the attacks, the perpetrator put his convictions into writing and sent many pages around the world via the Internet.
1 See for example, Alston chase, harvard and the unabomber (2003); Roger lane, Murder in America 314 (1997).Google Scholar
2 For more on him, see also lothar fritze, legitimer widerstand? der fall elser (Legitimate resistance? The Elser case, 2009); Peter steinbach & Johannestuchel, georg elser (2010).Google Scholar
3 Two perpetrator with radical Islamic background: Arid Uka, who murdered two American servicemen at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011 (sentenced to life imprisonment by Hessian High Court), and Mohammad Merah, who shot three French Soldiers, a Rabbi and three Jewish children in the Midi-Pyrénées-region in March 2012 (he was killed in a gunfight with the French police).Google Scholar
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6 Strafgesetzbuch (“StGB”) or the German Criminal Code.Google Scholar
7 BVerfGE (Reports of the Federal Constitutional Court) 5, 85, 139; 25, 88, 100; Horst Dreier, Grenzen demokratischer Freiheit im Verfassungsstaat (Limits of democratic freedom in the Constitution State), 49 juristenzeitung (JZ) 741 (1994); eckhard jesse, streitbare demokratie (Militant Democracy, 1980); Hans-Jürgen Papier & Wolfgang Durner, Streitbare Demokratie, 128 archiv des öffentlichen rechts 340 (2003); militant democracy (András Sajó ed., 2004); the ‘militant democracy’ principle in modern democracies (Markus Thiel ed., 2009); on the origin of this idea, see Karl Loewenstein, Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights, 31 american political science review 417, 638 (1937).Google Scholar
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10 BVerfGG: Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgesetz, or Federal Constitutional Court Act.Google Scholar
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12 PartG: Parteiengesetz or the Political Parties Act.Google Scholar
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15 In addition, in both cases, fines are also possible. Moreover, the other substantive decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court in the prohibition procedure according to Article 21 subsection 2 GG and Section 33 subsection 2 PartG and the enforcement of the substantive decisions passed in such a procedure are also protected by punishment: in this respect contraventions also face a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine (Section 84 subsection 3 StGB).Google Scholar
16 Section 127 StGB, which threatens anyone “forming armed groups” with up to two years’ imprisonment or a fine, is not taken into consideration here. According to this, it is punishable to form or command a group in possession of weapons or other dangerous instruments, to join such a group, provide it with weapons or money or otherwise support it.Google Scholar
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