I am german, right. And as such i had to google the translation of "complicit" ;-)
So: no, i dont think that anybody who does not condem the OPs attacker is partiylly to blame for that behaviour. Not at all. I simply think its funny how some people are getting off so hard denying the "griefing" aspect on any of these posts that they lose focus the matter at hand, a simple act of uncalled cruelty for the sake of cruelty. And reading that some of them try do veer the discussion off to semantics seem to indicate that they are doing the same stuff and dont want to lose any victims to modes where they cant do "their" thing at all.
At least thats how i see these posts.
English is a contextual language and semantics do play an important part of that... To call something a name that actually means something else rubs some people the wrong way... Under the commonly accepted term for griefing what the OP experienced was not that...
I personally take offense to your suggestion that because I choose to argue over the actual correct use of the word griefing that I must therefore be a person who plays with the mindset of causing grief to other players... You do not know the reasons behind the original attack and I suspect the OP doesn't either, one could surmise that perhaps the attacker was simply bored, saw a human commander in a combat craft and perhaps thought there might be some 'sport' in that...
I also do not think people playing psychopaths are a problem, they rarely affect me, to each their own, I have had more NPC psychopaths try to take me down for no reason than commander psychopaths... oh and I only play in OPEN...
That'll never happen. NPC bounty hunters ignore unwanted ships, and NPC pirates sarcastically dismiss you if you have no cargo. AFAIK there are no NPC psychopaths in the current build. There was some fairly sociopathic NPC behaviour in earlier versions but I think that was more down to bugged code than digital role-play. SJA's little virtual people seem to play by a reasonably robust set of rules, but of course that could change.
There are heaps of NPC psychopaths in the current build... plenty of them... Some will interdict you and just open fire telling you they are going to boil you etc...
NPCs are not responsible for their own actions, players are.
It does not matter from a gameplay perspective tho... if you die to an NPC or a CMNDR the outcome is the same...
FWIW there is a long discussion going on in the crimes and punishments thread, I have put forward a proposal some days ago that maybe some of you should take a look at if you have not already, it covers a great number of aspects of the crimes and punishment parts of the game with some workable methods to deal with some of the problems bounty hunters face, serial criminals should face and also puts forwards a variation on time delays to payments based on actions done in game, station, system, faction (minor and major) affects and the possibility of being unable to dock in a factions space for serious enough crimes etc.