Terrorism

Most people, when asked what terrorism is, will say that it is the use of violence and terror to create fear among people. This is broadly the dictionary definition. The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, in which 22 people, including many children, were killed, is a clear example.

Yet the legal definition of terrorism in Britain is far broader than this common understanding. Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows even “damage to property” to constitute terrorism when it is carried out for a political, religious, racial or ideological purpose and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public. Where firearms or explosives are involved, the latter requirement does not apply.

Including politically motivated damage to property within the definition was controversial from the start. When Parliament debated the bill in 1999, animal liberation activists were among the groups MPs had in mind.

Labour MP Alan Simpson warned during the debate that by defining attacks on property as terrorism, “we transform the relationship between civil protest movements and elected Parliaments and the judicial system.”

The criticism did not end with Parliament. The Supreme Court later described Section 1’s definition of terrorism as “very far-reaching”, while David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called it “remarkably broad – absurdly so in some cases”.

In his 2012 report, Anderson observed:

“The current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict… however odious the regime which they have attacked.”

In his 2014 Terrorism Report, he warned:

“To render people subject to the terrorism laws whom no sensible person would think of as terrorists risks destroying the trust upon which these special powers depend for their acceptance by the public.”

Yet defining what can count as terrorism is only part of the story. Not every organisation whose conduct falls within that definition is proscribed. That decision rests with the government.

Proscription therefore adds a political choice: Which organisations should be banned, making membership and inviting support for them criminal offences.

For example, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group that has fought the Turkish state for decades, is proscribed in Britain. Its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not, because PYD-led forces became Western allies in the fight against ISIS (ISIL).

Britain proscribed Hamas’s military wing in 2001. In 2021, Home Secretary Priti Patel extended that proscription to Hamas in its entirety, including its political wing, declaring the previous distinction between the two “artificial”. Many civilian members of Hamas who had never picked up a gun were now deemed terrorists alongside its fighters.

By collapsing the distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings, Britain legitimised Israel’s portrayal of Hamas’s civilian administration as part of a terrorist apparatus and, with it, the targeting of hospitals and schools as terrorist infrastructure.

The asymmetry is stark. Britain’s terrorism laws can criminalise non-state organisations and those who support them, while state terrorism, including Israel’s, remains outside their reach.

The proscription of Palestine Action brought a different consequence of these laws into focus: Their use against protest in Britain. Palestine Action is a British direct-action group that has targeted arms companies supplying Israel. In July 2025, the government proscribed it under the Terrorism Act 2000.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action “raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist”.

The ban has been fiercely contested in the courts. In February 2026, the Divisional Court ruled the proscription unlawful. On June 15, the Court of Appeal reversed that decision and upheld the ban. The court also described Elbit as carrying out a “lawful business”, ignoring its role in supplying the Israeli military during the genocide.

In upholding the ban, Lady Chief Justice Sue Carr drew a contrast with the Suffragettes, saying Palestine Action was not “a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open” but “a covert group operating in cells”.

Carr’s characterisation rests on an extraordinarily sanitised version of suffragette history.

In November 1909, a suffragette attacked Winston Churchill with a horse whip. In the same month, suffragettes, armed with a catapult and missiles, attacked Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s car in Liverpool.

In 1912, Suffragettes attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a matinee attended by Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh had hurled a hatchet towards Asquith.

In 1913, four postmen in Dundee were severely injured by phosphorus chemicals left in post boxes. The following year, Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, while bombs were discovered in St Paul’s and churches were burned down.

This history sits uneasily with Carr’s distinction. The Suffragettes themselves engaged in politically motivated attacks on property and people of precisely the kind that Britain’s modern definition of terrorism is broad enough to capture.

The Filton case shows what this can mean in practice. When the Filton 25 attacked an Elbit factory in Bristol, they were remanded in custody for up to 18 months. When six of them went on trial in November 2025, the jury acquitted them of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge, and failed to reach verdicts on criminal damage. No defendant was convicted at that first trial. At a retrial, four were convicted of criminal damage; only one was eventually convicted of grievous bodily harm, without intent.

The jury was not told that guilty verdicts could later lead to the offences being treated as having a “terrorist connection” for sentencing. Justice Jeremy Johnson subsequently made precisely that finding. Johnson had also ruled out defences based on necessity and the need to prevent the greater crime of genocide. In doing so, he usurped the role of the jury.

The consequences of the ban were not confined to those accused of taking direct action against Elbit. Once Palestine Action was proscribed, inviting or expressing support for the group became a terrorism offence.

When the government proscribed Palestine Action, people defied the ban. Nearly 4,000 people have been arrested for holding placards supporting Palestine Action.

The Home Office reported that in the year ending March 2026, there were 3,061 terrorism-related arrests, 2,819 of them linked to suspected support for Palestine Action. The average age of those arrested in connection with Palestine Action was 59, compared with 31 for all other terrorism-related arrests. A majority of the Palestine Action arrests were women.

The profile of Britain’s average “terrorist” changed from a man aged 31 to a woman aged 59.

This is where Britain’s extraordinarily broad definition of terrorism, combined with the government’s power to proscribe organisations, has led. Conduct once understood as protest and political expression can now be prosecuted under terrorism legislation.

As Orwell wrote, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” When the meaning of “terrorism” is stretched far enough, the extraordinary powers attached to that word stretch with it.

Today, my own trial begins. I am accused of inviting support for Hamas. My prosecution is not separate from the story told here. It is where that story leads.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

In the UK around 14 million people are still paying ‘too much’

Personal finance expert Martin Lewis has told anyone with an iPhone or Android mobile to text a four-letter word. In a new video on Youtube, the ITV and BBC star said millions of people continue paying sky-high prices on contracts which are no longer binding.

He said that in the UK around 14 million people are still paying too much – often for deals which got them a new handset – and can save hundreds. People were told to check their contract status by texting ‘INFO’ for free to 85075.

Mr Lewis explained: “There’s a way to find out if you can save on your mobile bill just by typing five digits into your phone. All you got to do is text the word info info to 85075. This is a service the regulator mandates mobile phone networks to offer. It’s totally free. They then have to reply with whether you have any early termination or early cancellation charges.

“If it says you don’t, so 0 early termination, it means one of 14 million people who are out of contract and you’re therefore free to ditch and switch and the vast majority of people who are out of contract are seriously overpaying on their phones. So what do you then do? Well, just go on to a comparison site like money-saving experts cheap simfinder and see what’s available.

“Couple of quick notes. If you’re on three smarty or ID mobile, then when you do the text, it will reply back asking you for your date of birth, which is just an ID check. And I should Also note if you’re on a multiple phone contract like couple of different handsets on the contact on the contract it can’t do this. So then simple rule of thumb if you’ve been on the same deal for more than two years you’re almost certainly out of contract. Do check it out.”

If the “Early Termination” or “Cancellation Charge” reads £0, meaning your contract has run out, the MoneySavingExpert founder said, “go to a cheap SIM comparison site”, where a selection of suppliers will offer the same SIM allowance for a fraction of the price.

“If you’re on a multiple-phone contract, you won’t be able to do this”, he added.

He has previously explained how the cost of getting a new SIM has plunged – meaning people could get the full service on their handset for a lot less. He said previously: “Prices have been going up and up. At the same time the cost of new customer SIM deals have been plummeting. For 50gb two years ago you’d have been paying £9. Now you can get it as cheap as about £3 a month.”

Pointing to a diagram on screen Mr Lewis said: “Look at that dispersal – you’ve got existing customers going up and up and up and new customers going down and down and down.”

Mr Lewis went on to explain his three steps for mobile customers to cut costs. He said: “14 million people are out of contract on their mobile phone bill which means you are free to switch.”

He said there is an ‘easy’ way to find out if you are one of those out of contract. Mr Lewis explained: “You text ‘info’ for free to 85075 to check.” He added that people on Three would need to then enter their date of birth. He said that those in contract would still have to pay a termination fee, but otherwise people are free to switch: “You’re a free agent – you can go and get the cheapest deals, you can cut your costs.”

He added that once people decide to switch if they want to keep their number, all they have to do is text PAC (Porting Authorisation Code) to 85075 and give that code to your new provider which will than be able to take the number. According to the MSE founder, the best deals aren’t found by going directly to the big operators – instead he said that if someone is out of contract they should go to comparison sites.

Presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, along with Spain’s King Felipe VI, are expected to attend Friday’s ceremony.

Colombia’s outgoing defence minister has warned of a heightened risk of “terrorism” ahead of Friday’s inauguration of President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella.

Minister of Defence Pedro Sanchez told radio station La FM on Wednesday that authorities were tracking a “threat” against Friday’s proceedings. “Most likely, these criminals would attempt to disrupt this democratic event with acts of terrorism,” he said.

The handover of the presidency will take place in the region of Cali in Colombia’s southwest, which has recently seen a series of militia attacks.

De la Espriella, 48, who narrowly won the June presidential run-off, had asked Congress to move the event from the capital, Bogota, to the country’s third-largest city despite its proximity to areas under the control of rebel groups.

Several foreign leaders, including the presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, along with Spain’s King Felipe VI, are expected to attend the inauguration ceremony.

To secure the event, Colombia’s military is deploying roughly 11,000 troops and has imposed a no-fly zone on drones over Cali and its surroundings. Rebel fighters have previously used drones to drop explosives.

In the department of Cauca, near Cali, a dissident faction of the FARC armed group operates under the command of Ivan Mordisco, the alias of Colombia’s most wanted rebel leader.

The hard-right de la Espriella campaigned on dismantling outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” negotiation strategy with armed groups.

Petro has disputed the election result and said he will not attend Friday’s ceremony.

July 30 (UPI) — A federal jury has convicted the New Jersey man who attempted to murder writer Salman Rushdie on additional terrorism-related charges, including attempting to provide material support to the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah.

Hadi Matar of Fairview, N.J., was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a state court in May 2025 for trying to kill Rushdie on Aug. 12, 2022.

Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the India-born writer at New York’s Chautauqua Institution in Mayville, N.Y., before being subdued by audience members and taken into police custody. Rushdie lost vision in his right eye and suffered nerve damage as a result of the attack.

A federal jury in the Western District of New York on Wednesday convicted Matar on charges of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, engaging in an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and providing material support to terrorists. Matar faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on the most serious charge when sentenced on Nov. 3.

“Hadi Matar, who was born and raised in the United States, chose to align his values with the terroristic values of the leaders of Iran, which often promote violence, and in this case, the call for murder,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York Michael DiGiacomo said in a statement.

“The defendant spent months planning and preparing to carry out what he hoped would be the execution of Salman Rushdie and possibly follow in the footsteps of martyrs he admired. Instead, his attempted act of terror failed, and Salman Rushdie survived, thanks to courageous members of the public and law enforcement, who saved Rushdie and captured Matar.”

The trial began July 22, and Rushdie, 79, testified.

DiGiacomo said Rushdie answered every question asked of him by the defense and prosecutors.

“It was very powerful,” DiGiacomo said.

“And at the end, at some point, Mr. Rushdie removed his glasses so the jury could see the extent of the injury to his eye that he no longer has vision it.”

Prosecutors said Matar was attempting to carry out the orders of Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1989 called for Rushdie’s murder after the publication of his award-winning novel The Satanic Verses on the grounds that it was blasphemous to Islam.

The fatwa was reaffirmed in 2017 by Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei, and endorsed by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah was killed Sept. 27, 2024, in Israeli airstrikes on Beirut, while Khamenei was killed Feb. 28 in joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.

Federal prosecutors said during the trial that Matar had spent more than a year researching the fatwa before deciding to try to kill Rushdie and discussed it with people in Iran, Australia and Canada.

According to the Justice Department, Matar had surrounded himself with Hezbollah symbols ahead of the attack and had traveled to the institution that day with a false driver’s license bearing the name Hassan Mughniyeh, with Hassan being Nasrallah’s first name and Mughniyeh being the surname of Hezbollah’s former external security organization head, Imad Mughniyeh.

DiGiacomo told reporters following the conviction that ahead of the attack, Matar traveled by bus from New Jersey to Buffalo, then traveled toward the Chautauqua Institution.

On the morning of the attack, Matar visited a website run by Hezbollah and took screenshots of Hezbollah operatives who had died that month.

“The evidence presented in the trial showed that this attack was not spontaneous. It was deliberate. It was research. It was planned. It was motivated by violent extremist ideology,” Alan Davis, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo field office, said during the press conference.

“For more than a year, the defendant researched a decades-old fatwa, communicated with individuals overseas about carrying it out and embraced the propaganda and symbols of Hezbollah before traveling to western New York to commit this violent act.”

A man was convicted Wednesday of federal terrorism charges in the 2022 stabbing of Salman Rushdie, the author who has faced a decades-old death threat over his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

A jury found Hadi Matar guilty of all the charges against him, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.

A message seeking comment was sent to Matar’s attorneys.

Matar, 28, is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence on an attempted murder conviction in the August 2022 attack on an amphitheater stage. The federal conviction carries a potential life sentence.

Rushdie, who was about to speak on writers’ safety when he was attacked, was slashed 15 times in front of a stunned audience. He was gravely wounded and lost the sight in his right eye.

Matar’s defense: No evidence of his state of mind

Prosecutors asserted that Matar was motivated by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ’s 1989 call for Rushdie’s death because of “The Satanic Verses.” Defense lawyer Nathaniel Barone countered that the government had no proof of what was in Matar’s head.

Matar himself declined to testify. Rushdie did, telling jurors: “I can’t say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body.”

Rushdie won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for his 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” about his native India. “The Satanic Verses,” a novel of magical realism about the lives and dreams of two actors who survive a plane explosion, followed in 1988.

It drew critical acclaim in the United Kingdom but engendered protests around the Muslim world over what some believers saw as blasphemous suggestions about Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, particularly in a dream sequence. In the ensuing years, at least 45 people have been killed in riots over the book, a Japanese translator was stabbed to death, an Italian translator was attacked and survived, and the book’s Norwegian publisher survived a shooting.

Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family, has said the dream sequence was just that. But he went into hiding for years, gradually emerging after Iran’s government distanced itself in 1998 from Khomeini’s fatwa, or religious edict.

“For two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of trouble,” Rushdie testified at the trial in Buffalo, N.Y.

Yet the fatwa was never rescinded; indeed, Khomenei’s successor, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated in 2017 that it remained in effect. An Iranian foundation has offered a bounty of more than $3 million for killing Rushdie.

Prosecutors: Matar’s messages showed him zeroing in on Rushdie

Matar repeatedly broached the fatwa with contacts in messaging apps in 2021 and 2022, according to exhibits shown in court. The messages showed Matar fuming that he felt Rushdie had attacked Islam and, by surviving, emboldened others to insult the faith. Matar alluded to a 2006 comment along those lines by the late Hezbollah militant group leader Hassan Nasrallah, the messages showed.

Born in the U.S., Matar also holds citizenship in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Prosecutors said that photos in Matar’s New Jersey bedroom and on his computer indicated his support for Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

Matar aimed to fulfill the fatwa and “wanted everyone to know he was doing this for Hezbollah,” Asst. U.S. Atty. Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement July 22.

The messages showed Matar initially talked about wanting to “expose” Rushdie, then about killing him. In a private note to himself, he wrote: “We need to kill him ASAP,” according to Lynch. The prosecutor said Matar framed the planned killing as part of what he considered a jihad, or holy war.

By spring 2022, the electronic chats showed, Matar wrote that he had discerned where Rushdie lived and was tracking his public appearances, eventually pointing out his scheduled August 2022 talk at the Chautauqua Institution, a western New York arts and intellectual center.

As Rushdie was being introduced, his attacker climbed on stage behind him, then stabbed him 15 times as the audience gasped. Spectators and another speaker, Henry Reese, scrambled to aid Rushdie. Law enforcement officers, assigned to the event, arrested the attacker — soon identified as Matar — after civilians restrained him.

Rushdie published a 2024 memoir about the attack, then returned to fiction with last year’s “The Eleventh Hour.” The author, who was knighted by Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II, received a Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.

Peltz writes for the Associated Press.

July 22 (UPI) — The man who rushed a stage to attack author Salman Rushdie will face federal terrorism charges in a trial that began Wednesday in New York.

Hadi Matar, 28, was found guilty of murder in state court last year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the August 2022 attack that left Rushdie blind in one eye and without use of one hand.

The federal case will determine if the attack was an act of terrorism and if he was carrying out a fatwa against Rushdie, set by the former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or if it was for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, or neither.

Khomeini, then the ayatollah of Iran, created the fatwa in 1989 because of Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988. Hardline Muslims considered the book blasphemous because of the way it portrayed the Prophet Muhammad.

The attack on Rushdie happened at the Chautauquah Institution in Chautauquah, N.Y., as he was delivering a speech for more than 1,000 people on writers in political exile. Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times.

Matar is a U.S. citizen of Lebanese origin who was raised in New Jersey and California. His friends and relatives said that after some professional and academic frustration, he became religious. His mother told The New York Times that she could not support him.

Rushdie, 79, wrote and published in 2024, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir about the attack and his recovery.

Matar had written in his notebook a list of pros and cons to attacking Rushdie. The Times reported that a page provided by prosecutors showed that he wrote one reason not to do it was: “Could make life worse. But I doubt that. It kind of sucks already.”

FORT WORTH, Texas — A demonstrator who shot and wounded a police officer outside a Texas immigration center last July 4 was sentenced to 100 years in federal prison Tuesday, while other protesters accused of having links to antifa were given multiple decades in federal prison.

Benjamin Song was convicted of attempted murder last March after prosecutors say he opened fire and wounded a police officer at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado.

The seven other protesters sentenced Tuesday received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

“Our issue with this case has always been this isn’t a bunch of terrorists. This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Philip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

He said his client would appeal the sentencing.

“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”

One of the defendants, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was convicted of corruptly concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents. Others pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

Prosecutors say the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization that has become a target of the Trump administration. They have denied any affiliation and maintain they attended the demonstration to show support for immigrants inside the detention center.

President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.

Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

Stengle and Marcelo write for the Associated Press. Marcelo reported from New York.

The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for 14 countries including Cyprus and Turkey

The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for a number of countries including Cyprus and Turkey, in relation to the Middle East War.

The UK government has issued an update around ‘regional tensions’ in the two holiday hotspots, after the US and Iran announced a ‘memorandum of understanding’ this week. It also comes as a warning against travel to the UAE has been lifted, including the likes of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The Foreign Office hasn’t advised against travel to either Cyprus or Turkey throughout the conflict, which started earlier this year. At the time of writing, it only has one warning in place for a region in Turkey, which was unrelated to the conflict, warning against “all travel to within 10km of the border with Syria due to fighting and a heightened risk of terrorism”.

Now, the government body has issued an update for Brits planning to head to Cyprus and Turkey for holidays in time for the peak holiday season.

The updated advice explains: “The US and Iran have announced a memorandum of understanding in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. The situation remains unpredictable and attacks could resume at short notice.

“Should hostilities resume, British nationals should:

• read If you’re affected by a crisis abroad – GOV.UK. This includes guidance on “how to prepare for a crisis” with suggestions on what you might include in your emergency supplies and “what to do in a crisis”
• follow advice from the local authorities
• sign up to FCDO Travel Advice email alerts
• monitor local and international media for the latest information
• stay away from areas around security or military facilities
• keep your departure plans under review, and ensure your travel documents are up to date
• if you are advised to take shelter, stay indoors or find the nearest safe building or designated shelter. An interior stairwell or a room with as few external walls or windows as possible may provide additional protection. The greatest risk is from falling debris caused by intercepts. You are safest inside a secure structure

“Before the 8 April ceasefire, the Iranian regime had stated its intention to target locations associated with the United States and Israel. This included US or Israeli-linked organisations, businesses, facilities and institutions. Iran has previously targeted civilian infrastructure across the region such as ports, hotels, roads, bridges, energy facilities, oil production sites, water systems, and airports.”

A UK court has sentenced four pro-Palestine activists to jail for a raid on an Israeli arms factory near Bristol in 2024. Palestine Action says their aim was to ‘dismantle drones and weaponry’ they believed would be used to kill people in Gaza.