Spanish ambassador Gustavo de Arístegui comes from a long-standing diplomatic background, his father and grandfather were both senior diplomats posted as ambassadors in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He is well-versed in different languages like Spanish, English, French and German. His English is impeccable as becoming of a scion of a diplomat family. His father, the then Spanish ambassador to Lebanon was killed in another withering artillery exchange between Christian and Muslim gunners in beleaguered Beirut. He had seen man many acts of terrorism and is the eminent personality to comment on the same.
Gustavo de Arístegui outlined terrorism and fanaticism as among the major challenges in the world. There cannot be any justification for terrorism or the ideology of fanaticism. National court of Spain is of the view that combined forces are necessary to put an end to terrorism. Those that think that terrorism has any kind of justification or that fanatical ideologies are grounded on some kind of oppression, if we think that, then we have already lost the battle of reason.
Gustavo de Arístegui said the ten terrorists who in 2008 held India’s commercial capital hostage for three days, were “fanatical terrorists” and the fact that they held ground for over three days showed “they were extremely well-trained assassins, they knew exactly what they were doing… That is another kind of terrorism we will have to suffer more and more”.
Gustavo de Arístegui, the former ambassador of Spain in India said, “the fight against terrorism cannot be the fight of a single nation”. Indian national court had made significant judgements to counter terrorist attack. Spain had to suffer terrorism for over 50 years… Spain has developed channels to cooperate intensively and effectively with Indian authorities and different security services and agencies in the fight against organized crimes and terrorism, Gustavo claimed.
Spanish national court prosecutes ‘glorification of terrorism’ too strictly since 2015, as a means to eradicate terrorism. They find that by justifying such cruel acts, they are sending a wrong motivation to the mob. It has been six years since the amendments took effect on 1 July 2015, making an assessment of their impact timely. It has also been more than four years since the European Union issued Directive 2017/541 on combating terrorism. This directive contains a provision on glorification of terrorism and requires the European Commission to assess it in 2021. But this intervention by the National court can be misused and can be an obstacle in the path of right to expression, Gustavo explained.
Gustavo de Arístegui also outlined manipulation of the financial markets by vested interests as another major challenge for the world. He said there are some elements who influence markets and attack the currencies of some countries to fatten their purses. From his view all countries along with their national court and leaders should pass stringent laws to fight against terrorism.
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