Guilty knowledge: A postcolonial inquiry into knowledge, suspicion, and responsibility in the fight against terrorism financing

Abstract

Abstract This article studies practices of knowledge production during counterterrorism financing court cases in European courts. Developments in international law have contributed to novel regulations to criminalise and prosecute the funding of terrorism in advance of terrorist violence. In this study, we study how court cases have become important spaces for contesting and evaluating multiple knowledge claims on terrorist threat and suspicion by analysing case proceedings from both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Building on recent debates in International Relations and postcolonial theory, we make two contributions. First, building on insights from postcolonial literature on ‘abyssal thinking’, we illustrate how legal practices differentiate between different ways of knowing by dismissing certain experiences as ‘emotional’ or ‘subjective’ in contrast to the assumed objectivity of other knowledge claims. We argue that decisions on what counts as knowledge in a court setting are situated in a specific sociopolitical setting, whereby particular knowledge and life-worlds are recognised at the expense of others. Second, we empirically show how the novel criminal laws shifts the responsibility to know terrorist threat from the state to ordinary citizens. We illustrate how the court reinforces new security logics where the state can entertain doubt, uncertainty, and trust in their practices, while the citizens cannot.