Should the victims of a terrorist attack be treated differently from the victims of other crimes, or of natural disasters? If so, how? Should they have a different legal status? Do they have different needs? How can they get justice, when those who have harmed them commit suicide in the attack?

There is no question that in a terrorist attack, the physical, psychological and political impact is usually much greater than in ‘ordinary' criminal violence. Some say the victims of terrorism are innocent soldiers on the front line in a war in which the potential casualties include the entire general public.

They are representatives of a targeted larger group who are basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. In addition to the primary victims and their loved ones, a much wider group of people who are frightened or threatened by the attack are also victimized, and communities can become antagonized.

Tsunami
The victims of terrorism have the same immediate needs of the victims of other forms of crime: they need to be recognised and taken seriously, they need help to recover their lives and their humanity, they need for their offenders to be brought to justice, and they need compensation. The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, for example, paid out an average of two million dollars to the bereaved of each person killed in 9/11 and an average of 400,000 dollars to each person who was physically injured.

The generosity and efficiency of the Fund was unique and unprecedented, however, and according to the prominent American lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, the Special Master of the Fund, "It will never happen again". In fact, how does one justify this to the victims of other terrorist attacks, like the Oklahoma bombing, or to the victims of the tsunami and hurricane Katrina for that matter? "You can't", says Mr Feinberg, "at least not from the perspective of the victims".

IRA bomb attack
As Mr Feinberg points out, "compensation is not justice". He said that the greatest need of the claimants was to be heard, to express anger, to redeem justice for a loved one. This confirms what Maureen Basnicki, a Canadian 9/11 widow says: "No amount of money can compensate. We seek justice."

But justice remains elusive in the wake of a suicide attack and when the powers behind an attack cannot be apprehended, and although there is far more focus on the needs of the victims in the 21st century, it has been a long time coming. After Jo Berry's father, Sir Anthony Berry MP, was murdered in an IRA bomb attack in 1984, she said she could not really speak with anyone about what had happened to her. "Nobody wanted to hear. People couldn't cope with the amount of pain I was feeling. So I was told to just let go." And in much more recent years, the Spanish authorities tended to ignore the victims of ETA terrorism, but today they are much more sensitive.

Get people talking
Both Ms Basnicki and Ms Berry have adopted an active stance in pursuing their personal process of healing and recovering empowerment. Maureen Basnicki has helped to set up C-CAT, the Canadian Coalition Against Terror, and she is now focussing her efforts on litigation in civil courts to get to the bottom of the funding behind terrorism.

Jo Berry undertook a long moral journey that taught her to see the enemy as a human being. She joined people in Northern Ireland who had suffered the same loss and eventually she even met her father's killer. "If you get people talking, it is much more effective for reducing tensions", says professor Uri Yanay of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, whose research has focussed in recent years on the victims of crime and terrorism.

"We have quite a number of groups of Palestinians and Israelis who meet regularly to discuss the pain, agony and loss, and of course what comes next. It has an immense healing effect on those involved."

Restorative justice
It can take years before victims are prepared to meet with the offenders or people associated with them, but this form of restorative justice gives victims a more active role and gives them a chance to rage and to blame, but also to forgive. And it gives the offenders a chance to make amends and to acknowledge the pain they have inflicted. Although restorative justice cannot replace regular court proceedings against terrorists, it can offer victims a supplement. As noted victimologist professor Jan Van Dijk of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands points out:

"The concept of restorative justice is vitally important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in order to reconcile the ethnic groups involved on both sides."