offenses or that are may be penalized as other crimes. It indicated that the lack of precision in the definition of crimes creates the opportunity for “abuse of authority,” and may “restrict due process guarantees, as depending on which category of crime is charged, the effect may be to change the penalty imposed.” Article 1 of the Counter-terrorism Act “does not explain what means employed may have the effect of transforming a common crime into a terrorist crime,” and that “it cannot be considered that this imprecision is rectified [by the list of …] some means that entail a presumption [of terrorist intent].” It asserted that there is no exact definition of terrorism under international law; but there is a consensus about “some basic elements” that States should use in order to define such offenses. The Commission included some considerations on the impossibility of determining when an act constitutes a terrorist or an ordinary offense based on the special subjective elements of terrorism and also referred to the incompatibility of the presumption of terrorist intent with the principle of legality and other guarantees such as the presumption of innocence. It considered that “the use of presumptions in the definition of offenses was not only incompatible with the principle of strict legality, but also with […] the presumption of innocence.” It stated that Law No. 18,314 defines acts that would not be considered of a terrorist nature and seriousness under international law and indicated that all the foregoing considerations extend to the “description of the crimes of ‘attempting’ or ‘threatening’ to commit terrorist offenses” and that the imprecision of the latter had an impact in the case of Messrs. Norín Catrimán and Pichún Paillalao. The Commission also indicated that the 2010 amendment of the Counter-terrorism Act did not involve a substantial modification that made it compatible with the principle of legality, that it was a structural change which kept the same wording as the previous version, and that the changes were merely in the phrases and connecting words used to combine the three hypotheses that would lead to the “presumption of terrorist intent.” It also affirmed that article 1 of the Counterterrorism Act, which was applied to the presumed victims, established, along with the purpose of instilling fear, another intent consisting in “to pressure the authorities to take a certain decision or to make demands on them.” It asserted that this intent could “stand on its own,” “irrespective of the means used or their effects,” and this could result in including “a multiplicity of hypotheticals that are not necessarily associated with terrorist violence per se” and make it difficult to differentiate it from offenses “that come under the heading of extortion or are aggravated by [that] purpose.” It also stated that the offenses and acts established in article 2 of this law are not necessarily the most serious and that include offenses that exclusively affect property, which runs counter to the international consensus that terrorist “violence is mainly an attack upon human life.” In addition, the Commission stated that there had been a violation of the principle of individual responsibility because in the three judgments convicting the presumed victims, “the courts made reference to acts committed by third parties before or at the same time as the offenses with which the [presumed] victims were charged,” and because during the criminal proceedings held against them “a series of witnesses were summoned to testify who described […] facts unrelated to the [presumed] victims,” which “were decisive factors in the conclusions reached by the judges with respect to the subjective element of the offense of terrorism,” even though the “only link between these third party acts and the [presumed] victims [was] the ethnic origin of those who reportedly committed them.” 157. The two common interveners stated that Law No. 18,314, which was applied to the presumed victims, violates the principle of legality protected by Article 9 of the Convention. They also raised objections concerning the imprecision of the definition of the offense and the consequent possibility that it include events in which the special terrorist intent had not existed. a) The FIDH affirmed that articles 1, 2, 3 and 7 of the Counter-terrorism Act are “vague and imprecise, which [leaves] room for the use of discretion and the introduction of factual presumptions that do not emerge from the legal description,” and considered that certain terms used in this law were indeterminate and did not allow the acts that are penalized under the law to be distinguished from ordinary criminal law; hence, the Counter-terrorism Act did not offer legal certainty to the individual. In addition, it 53