What, if any, are the similarities between radical terrorist groups and organised crime gangs? Such was the question for a project launched in 2016 after terrorist attackss in places such as Nice, Paris, Brussels and London. A ‘Takedown’ project was funded with a 3.5 million euros grant from the European Commission.
Middlesex University lecturer Prof Vincenzo Ruggiero said: ‘The debate has gone on for decades about organised crime, transnational crime and how globalisation is bringing new types of crimes. Every country is trying to develop a strategy to tackle these crimes and understand how it works.
‘When terrorist activities started to become more intense, the attention shifted towards terror. Then there was realisation that organised crime and terrorism are two structures, two types of organisations but they may share something in common and that’s when the debate started: Will the strategies we have to tackle organised crime work against terrorism?’
He concluded; it is a mistake to treat organised crime and terrorism in the same way which could influences the tactics used by police forces across Europe. ‘My position is that you cannot call organised crime everything you don’t like. Also, I do not believe in a global conspiracy involving all those who pursue evil. I would make a very clear distinction, empirically and theoretically, between organised crime and terrorism.
‘The most successful forms of the former, for example, tend to reduce the use of violence to a minimum, while the most successful forms of the latter tend to maximise it. Moreover, successful forms of organised crime rely on complicity in the higher echelons of societies, while terrorism purports to represent the lower strata of the societies they refer to.’
‘In brief, I don’t believe the Mafia is like IS. I believe they have totally different structures, ideologies and skill sets.’
He has been asked to speak about the Takedown research in April at the 14th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Kyoto, Japan.
