by Rod Hughes

The country most dedicated to peace may be booted from EGMONT, the world’s leading anti-terrorist organization, reported the daily La Nacion today. And the reason may surprise even the Foreign Ministry: Terrorism, as such, isn’t illegal here.

The reason may be that before 9/11, the idea never occurred to Costa Rican lawmakers. A terrorist act usually entails loss of life and that is treated in Costa Rica’s strict laws about murder, even though the country did away with the death penalty in the 10th century. Also, they may have depended upon the country’s stout avocacy for peace.

EGMONT is an organization created by G-8, the eight most powerful nations on the planet, a vast pool of data shared by subscribers on the doings of terrorists worldwide. The organization requires in turn that laws specifically mentioning terrorism be on the books.

Costa Ricans have been victims of terrorists, specifically in the mid-1980s when a bomb placed in a press conference called by Contra leader Eden Pastora exploded, killing two native Costa Rican journalists and the U.S. reporter for The Tico Times, and wounded many others. But the site of that blast, La Penca, is across the San Juan River in Nicaragua, part of a civil war going on there in those Cold War days.

Although former judge and penal expert Ewald Acuna notes that for most purposes, local criminal law covers terrorism although not by name, the law needs updating. Criminologist and former UN Hostage Unit negotiator Gerardo Castaing agrees, saying the legislation needs “semantic changes” rather than reform. But chief of the country’s drug institute, Mauricio Boraschi, notes that the main loophole is prohibiting financing of terrorism.

Costa Rica also has had its own way of dealing with foreign terrorists trying to operate from within its borders. When, several decades ago, members of ETA, the Basque separatists responsible for bombings in Spain, were found to be taking refuge in Costa Rica, they were quickly and quietly expelled.