Suppression Of Terrorist Financing : Over-Criminalization Through International Law

This book closely and extensively examines international penal measures (criminalization and confiscation) of terrorist financing, the notions on which the measures are based, their adoption and application by countries, and their (un)justifiability with regard to the principles of criminal law, human rights, and democratic values.

In the last few decades, there has been a considerable effort, mainly from Western liberal countries, to create, develop, and diffuse into domestic laws, an internationally harmonized counter-terrorist financing regime through international treaties, recommendations and resolutions. This book aims to explore the penal (criminalization and confiscation) measures of the regime. Belonging to the category of analytical research, the book explores the nature of terrorist financing, and critically and extensively examines how it has been conceptualized and criminalized. The book argues that the application of these penal measures results in over-criminalization due to the vague conceptualization of the concept of terrorist financing, and due to its incompatibility with basic notions of criminalization and fundamental principles of the criminal law of many countries specifically Anglo-American law. Examining a number of ASEAN countries’ law on terrorist financing, the book then shows how these controversial measures have been crept into their law, resulting in the violation of human rights and democratic values which Western countries seek to promote.