Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY • 651Republican terrorist groups and the Ulster Protestant militias hadharsh codes of silence and enacted severe punishments, includingexecutions, against people regarded as willing informers, these terroristorganizations had also begun to attract scores of quasi-criminalrecruits motivated more by the gains of extortion from belonging tothese groups than by ideology. When arrested, such mercenary recruitscould be turned into informers much more easily than was thecase with the more ideologically committed terrorists captured in theearly years of the renewed Irish troubles.This system has used trials without juries, known as the Diplockcourts, and the uncorroborated testimony of one witness to effectscores of convictions. While many of these convictions have beenoverturned on appeal, the tactic has sowed much distrust, mutual recriminations,and internal discord within the affected Republican andLoyalist terrorist groups and so hampered their efficiency. By 1985authorities in Northern Ireland discontinued the supergrass systemwhen it became evident that most convictions obtained on the basisof supergrass informant testimony were being overturned.SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY (SLA). The SLA was a revolutionaryanarchistic leftist group in California that won notoriety withits kidnapping on 4 February 1974 of Patricia Hearst, daughter ofnewspaper publisher William R. Hearst Jr. The SLA brainwashed Ms.Hearst, who then, assuming the revolutionary sobriquet of “Tanya,”became an active participant in their bank robberies and bombings.A nationwide dragnet for Ms. Hearst and the SLA led police to anSLA safe house in Los Angeles, where six SLA members, includingtheir leader Nancy Ling Perry, perished on 17 May 1974 when policetear-gas canisters caused the safe house to burn to the ground. PatriciaHearst was later arrested in September 1975 and tried and convictedfor her role in one of the group’s bank robberies.Prior to Hearst’s kidnapping, the SLA had assassinated Dr. MarcusFoster, the superintendent of education of Oakland, California,on 6 November 1973 by shooting both him and his assistant, RobertBlackburn, with cyanide-tipped bullets. Blackburn was seriouslyinjured but not killed; the two SLA members responsible for thisattack were arrested on 10 January 1974 and later convicted andsentenced to life imprisonment. The subsequent kidnapping of PattyHearst was originally conceived as a means of pressuring authorities