Law as Gendered Narratives: Criminal Court Decisions against Left-Wing Terrorists

Abstract

Terrorism is a term that today is frequently associated with the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. In German-speaking countries, the word also recalls the attacks carried out by the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the 1970s and 1980s. Hardly anyone thinks of Switzerland in the context of terrorism, however, in the 1970s and 1980s, several terrorist trials were held there, which — at least from a contemporary perspective — were largely concerned with so-called ‘would-be terrorists’ (BAR E 4320 C, p. 2). These trials, which in part led to paradoxical sentencing, raised questions about what a terrorist is, and how the constitutional state can deal with terrorist attacks. This chapter is most concerned with how these trials were informed and structured by gendered narratives. In fact, its focus lies on how the judgments negotiated the relationship between different types of masculinities in 1970s Switzerland.