ABSTRACT
The massacre of innocents, the condoning of death squads or vigilante groups, the sponsorship of the terrorism of other regimes or of foreign terrorist groups operating abroad or, simply, carrying out terrorism in foreign countries: these can all be forms of state terrorism. Though differing in so many ways, what these various kinds of state terrorism have, crucially, in common is the abandonment of the due process of law for the adoption of summary justice, under which guilt is assumed, no defence or appeal allowed, no change in behaviour a means of escape from death. It is this lawlessness that they share with revolutionary reigns of terror and totalitarian terror regimes. How they differ from those regimes is that the acts of terrorism are carried out by ordinary state coercive forces, be they sometimes together with additional violent groups, rather than solely by state forces specially constructed for a system of terror. They also differ in that in these forms state terrorism is likely to be short-lived, or confi ned to some regions only, and, obviously, differ from terror regimes when carried out not at home but abroad.
