Terrorism

Terrorism is a violent means of promoting political interests adopted by supporters of a particular radical ideology (political, religious, national, separatist, ecological and other) usually targeting civilians.

Nowadays, terrorism is an international phenomenon affecting the whole world. Therefore the BIS focuses on international cooperation in this area. Combating terrorism is characterized by a pragmatic approach to assessing potential threats to the interests of the Czech Republic and to evaluating the possibility of an attack on buildings, citizens or interests of other states carried out in the Czech Republic. The BIS is also interested in activities aimed at recruiting new members, obtaining financial or logistic support for terrorism and at promoting radical interpretations of ideologies or religions supporting terrorist activities. Currently, the jihadist movement, the most radical branch of Islamic ideologies, is the major ideological source of international terrorism.

The international exchange of intelligence has prevented many attempts to carry out a terrorist attack and other activities related to terrorism, e.g. promotion, recruitment, or securing logistical support. Activities preceding terrorist attacks may also appear in the Czech Republic. Promotion and recruitment are often accompanied by radicalization. Much attention has been paid to this phenomenon as it fuels terrorism. With regard to the powers and responsibilities of intelligence services, radicalization is a crucial moment for gathering information essential to preventing terrorism. Logistical support provided to terrorist networks usually lies in financial support. Over the last few years, new inventive methods of transferring money from donors to recipients have appeared. Terrorists increasingly focus on jihadist propaganda as it is present at the beginning of thought processes leading to terrorist attacks. Due to the fact that jihadist propaganda makes frequent use of modern technologies, it is not possible to permanently limit or halt its influence. 

The rising efficiency of security systems forces the perpetrators of terrorist attacks to continually seek new means, methods and targets of their attacks. Currently, terrorist attacks tend to be aimed at civilians in public spaces (soft targets) using very simple and cheap improvised explosive devices constructed with the help of online instruction manuals. In the future, these extremely dangerous attacks will be increasingly often carried out by lone radicalized fanatics (the lone wolves phenomenon) without direct links to any terrorist organizations or other structures.