The Domestic Terrorist Victims dataset

The present dataset contains all the killings by domestic terrorist groups in Western European countries during the period 1965-2005. The unit of observation is the victim, not the attack. We include all victims in Europe as long as there is information about the political orientation of the killing and/or information about the group responsible for the killing. We only consider to be victims of terrorist violence those deaths that are a direct consequence of a terrorist attack. For instance, we exclude people who die of a heart attack that could be related to terrorist at tacks. Terrorists who die manipulating their own explosives are also excluded, because they are not considered victims (no one kills them). However, terrorists who are killed by members of their own organization or by rival organizations are included. The operational criterion that it is used to distinguish terrorist killings from other killings is the following: terrorist violence is that carried out by underground groups with political motivations. This excludes killings by underground g roups without political motivations (e.g. the mafia, narco groups) and killings by organizations that liberate territory from a state’s control and become guerrilla insurgencies, as they have different dynamics of violence to that of underground groups