Lone Wolf Terrorism Analysis

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Preventing terrorism is now the number one priority of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, and a top priority for state and local law enforcement agencies. In the past decade, as military and diplomatic efforts have contained the threat of international terrorism, attention has shifted to headline-grabbing "homegrown" terrorism. In the area of criminal law, this has resulted in the increased use of "material support" prosecutions, pretextual arrests for crimes unrelated to terrorism, conspiracy liability for inchoate terror plots, informants infiltrating Arab and Muslim communities, sting operations, and heightened physical and electronic surveillance. These tactics, while controversial, have been effective in disrupting numerous terror plots. But in recent years, and in large part because of law enforcement's …show more content…
The relatively novel threat of lone wolf terrorism presents a challenge for traditional law enforcement and prosecutorial approaches. Indeed, the threat is likely to increase in prevalence. Security experts note that the threat of lone wolf terrorism is one of the main vulnerabilities today. President Obama stated in 2011 that "the most likely scenario that we have toguard against right now ends up being more of a lone wolf operation than a large, well-coordinated terrorist attack." Events of the past few years corroborate this statement. Pimentel, RezwanFerdaus (a U.S. citizen arrested in Massachusetts for plotting to bomb the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol), Army Major NidalHasan (an Army doctor who killed thirteen individuals and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas), Arid Uka (a Kosovar Islamist who killed two U.S. service members in Germany), and Naser Jason Abdo (an enlisted soldier arrested for attempting to detonate a bomb near Fort Hood) are but a few of the many examples of this type of terrorism. Because of the relatively recent emergence of the lone wolf threat, legal scholarship has not fully addressed this specific type of