Abstract

The crime of cyber terrorism has appeared following the rapid developments in digital technology and the Internet, which have enabled many individuals and groups to carry out terrorist acts and facilitated the operations, promotion, and financing of these groups to commit various forms of crimes, such as drug trafficking, spreading pornographic movies, and accessing Web Sites, without authorization from their owners, to access data or to destroy it. The electronic terrorism crime has become a dangerous phenomenon that transcends frontiers and continents and threatens a large portion of world population because the perpetrators resort to different means and methods in committing that crime. This necessitates that all countries make more efforts to combat this crime and reduce its hazards. However, the efforts exerted at the national and international levels have not so far been sufficient due to a number of obstacles that limit the efficiency of these efforts, such as the lack of agreement among states on the acts that constitute a crime of international terrorism and the lack of expertise on the side of enforcement agencies that control and trace the perpetrators in some countries. This study concludes with a number of recommendations, most importantly to enhance the international cooperation in the field of combating crime and the need for capacity building of human resources, with appropriate equipment, to be able to control and trace criminals.