Tactics of terrorism
Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing support among terrorists' own community. What distinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does not expect to survive a mission and often employs a method of attack that requires the attacker's death in order to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearing a suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at the same time that he kills himself. Usually these tactics are used for a demonstrative purposes or to targeted assassinations. In most cases though, they target to kill a large number of people. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism.
Capital punishment in Saudi Arabia
Although there is no exact definition of the term "terrorism", the most common meaning is "to use intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror or fear, in order to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim ... against civilians or non-combatants". Also most terrorist attacks are characterised by long-term planning so clearly there is subtle difference between common crime (even with lethal consequences) and act of terrorism. Based on previous experience with human rights violation in Saudi Arabia there are strong reasons to take the statements of Saudi officials that Nimr al-Nimr is convicted terrorist with suspicion. This is supported by fact that in the list of offenses done by Nimr al-Nimr most of them are purely "thought crimes" like "disobeying the ruler", "inciting sectarian strife" and "encouraging, leading and participating in demonstrations".