Prof. Dr. MIGUEL ÁNGEL CANO PAÑOS

Full Professor in Criminal Law and Criminology. University of Granada

Miguel Ángel Cano Paños is Head Lecturer of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Granada (Spain). He is also Coordinator of the Degree in Criminology at the same university, Coordinator of the Official Master’s Degree in Criminality and Social Intervention with Minors, as well as scientific advisor of the CRIMINA centre, at the Miguel Hernández University, in Elche. He is also Deputy Director of the Electronic Journal of Criminal Science and Criminology.

After completing his studies in Law and Criminology at the University of Barcelona, Professor Cano moved to Germany in 1996, where he first studied a Master’s Degree in Criminal Law at the University of Münster, obtaining his degree in 1998. He later moved on to the University of Potsdam, where in 2003 he obtained his PhD in Criminal Law.

In 2008 he moved to the University of Granada as part of the Ramón y Cajal Programme. It is at the University of Granada where, since 2014, he has worked as a professor, university researcher and Head Lecturer of the university. We can also mention that in 2015, Professor Cano obtained his PhD in Criminology at the University of Murcia (Spain).

Miguel Ángel Cano has more than 60 publications on different aspects relating to Criminal Law and Criminology; publications that have appeared in prestigious Spanish, German and Spanish journals. We must also highlight the more than 80 conferences he has given in recent years in different countries, covering topics such as terrorism, organized crime, the legal consequences of crime, juvenile delinquency or criminological theories. On the subject of Islamic terrorism we must highlight his work “Generación yihad. La radicalización islamista de los jóvenes musulmanes en Europa” (Generation jihad. Islamic radicalization of young Muslims in Europe), published in 2010 by Dykinson.

Professor Cano has been a visiting researcher, at Spanish universities and further afield, including prestigious centres such as the Universities of Münster, Potsdam, Berlin, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Vienna or Turku.

  • Thursday, 8 November

    SESSION 2. THE CHALLENGE OF TERRORISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

  • 11:00  - 12:00
    Terrorism and freedom of expression
    Prof. Dr. Mª LUISA CUERDA ARNAU
    So-called jihadist terrorism represents a global threat to human rights from a dual perspective. On the one hand, organizations and criminal groups indiscriminately attack people and States with hitherto unknown criminal tactics. On the other hand, even the most consolidated democracies decide to tackle this new challenge with strategies which, in many cases, unacceptably defer internationally recognized rights and freedoms. This paper will address the latest penal reforms in the Spanish Criminal Code on terrorism introduced by Organic Law 2/2015. The priority objective is to demonstrate that they have been promoted from the most blatant populism, they have been implemented outside of a rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness, as well as to show that, as a whole, they reveal a deep aversion to guarantees. What is even more serious is that citizens begin to internalize that individual rights can take a back seat when speaking of national security, a disturbing and deliberately ambiguous concept in which almost everything has a place. Given this reality, it is imperative that democratic societies recover the conviction that human rights are the lifeblood of a peaceful, fair and supportive coexistence.

    The impending threat of Islamist terrorism and how to confront it through policing. A legal-penal analysis of the extreme hypothesis: shoot to kill
    Prof. Dr. MIGUEL ÁNGEL CANO PAÑOS
    Islamist terrorism presents a series of characteristics that diverge enormously from traditional terrorism, of an ethno-nationalist or socio-revolutionary nature; characteristics that can be summarised in two relevant standpoints: first, the adoption by terrorists of a broad concept of enemy, with no distinction between direct or indirect victims. Second, the totally unpredictable nature of their actions which, in many cases due to their suicidal nature, make it possible to change the modus operandi in a relatively short span of time. These circumstances mean that police forces find themselves faced with an omnipresent, ubiquitous and unpredictable threat. A threat which means that the use of so-called «direct coercion» in situations of grave danger, including the use of firearms to neutralise an action which is considered exceptional, result in the destruction of human life, even if it is the presumed terrorist. Examples such as those that occurred in Catalonia in the last two years vindicate this situation. On the basis of these assumptions, the aim of the talk is to analyse, from a criminological and, especially, a legal-penal point of view, the exercise of violence by police forces to supress extremely dangerous situations in the context of the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.




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Prof. Dr. MIGUEL ÁNGEL CANO PAÑOS