People commemorate the victims of the Copenhagen shootings at a gathering in Århus. Demotix/Gonzales Photo. All rights reserved.
The global spate of terrorist attacks has brought the phenomenon of online radicalisation to the forefront. Governments and intelligence services warn that extremist groups use social media to recruit new adherents and potential terrorists. From the perspective of human rights, this raises a question – where should the line be drawn between protecting free speech and criminalising “extremist speech” related to terrorism?
Last week that question was answered very differently in two similar cases by Norwegian and Danish appeal courts. Both cases dealt with radical Islamists who had uploaded comments, photos and videos with vocal support of terrorism and violent jihad on their respective Facebook accounts. In the Danish case the defendant had also sent a number of e-mails to a list-serve, and had edited and distributed a number of books on jihad.
