Terrorist Crime in the Polish Legal System (until 2004)
Terrorist Crime in the Polish Legal System (until 2004)

Summary/Abstract: In this article, the authors attempted to analyze the regulation of terrorist offenses in the provisions of Polish law before the entry into force of the amendment to the Criminal Code of 2004, which introduced the legal definition of such offenses in Article 115 Paragraph 20. It is believed that until the beginning of the 21st century, Poland had no legislation strictly aimed at combating terrorism. In the legal system of the Second Republic of Poland, the issues of terrorism were completely ignored. The article analyzes the legal acts implemented after the Second World War, after the communists seized power, reconstructing the chronological order of legal language from the concept of ‘terrorist occurrence’ (1945) through the ‘terrorist act’ (1946) to the ‘terrorist attack’ (1951), concluding that in the years 1952-1970 the term ‘terrorist attack’ had a legal definition in Polish law. Since 1970, the definition gap has made the semantic scope of the concept of ‘terrorist attack’ or ‘terrorist act’ unclear in the 1969 and 1997 Criminal Codes. Despite the lack of a statutory definition of a terrorist offense until 2004, there was a belief in the literature that Polish criminal legislation is sufficiently adapted to the need to combat the manifestations of terrorism. The Republic of Poland, adapting its provisions to international law requirements, finally introduced in 2004 the definition of terrorist offenses to the Criminal Code of 1997.

• Details
• Contents