Maritime and port terrorism – aphenomenon analysis

Abstract

Background: In theera of theglobal threat of terrorist attacks, seaports implement anumber of measures to eliminate them. As part of these activities, in addition to threat definition and risk analysis, they also take into account applicable normative documents, both international and national. However, many of these documents equate port terrorist threats with maritime terrorism, which until now has not been clearly defined. It would therefore seem desirable to define terrorist acts threatening seaports as aseparate form of terrorism. Consequently, theresearch problem closed with thequestion: Is maritime terrorism thesame as port terrorism and what factors distinguish them from each other? Objectives: Theaim of this paper is not only to present thetheoretical issues of thesubject, but above all to articulate thefactors that distinguish threats of maritime terrorism from threats of port terrorism and to prove that these are two different issues (problems). Methods: Theoretical research methods were used in this study, i.e. analysis of theliterature, analysis of theacts of maritime terrorism that have occurred so far, and inference, which is acognitive factor of thesubject under analysis. Results: Theresults of theresearch indicate that there are significant differences between aterrorist attack on thehigh seas and aterrorist attack on aseaport regarding not only theconsequences but also thescale of thethreat.