Executive Committee charged with evaluating UNCAT that there is no distinction between the phrases. “The scope of the Convention is limited to torture ‘inflicted by or at the instigation or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity’. Thus, the Convention applies only to torture that occurs in the context of governmental authority, excluding torture that occurs as a wholly private act or, in terms more familiar in US law, it applies to torture inflicted ‘under color of law’.” The appellant points to the fact that the Court of Appeals then went on to draw attention to the definition of “under color of law” in the different context of 42 USC para 1983 (“[t]he traditional definition of acting under color of state law requires that the defendant … have exercised power ‘possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law’”: West v Atkins, 487 US 42, 49 (1988) quoting in turn from United States v Classic, 313 US 299, 326 (1941)). Notwithstanding this equiparation of official conduct under UTCA and acting “under color of law” in a different context, the statement by the Senate Executive Committee and its adoption by the Court of Appeals makes clear that the distinction both sought to draw was between “torture that occurs in a the context of governmental authority” and “torture that occurs as a wholly private act”. Furthermore, Belfast was concerned solely with conduct which took place in Liberia after Charles Taylor had established himself as President of that State. Accordingly, it was not directly concerned with the question whether the conduct of a person acting on behalf of a quasi-governmental entity which is in de facto control of territory may give rise to official torture. Academic commentators 71. We have been referred to academic commentary which tends to support the reading of article 1 for which the prosecution contends. Thus, for example, Professor Paola Gaeta (When is the Involvement of State Officials a Requirement for the Crime of Torture?, Journal of International Criminal Justice 6 (2008), 183) explains that, whereas criminal law is usually the prerogative of each State, exceptionally international law is used by States for criminal issues as a tool to achieving stronger cooperation in judicial matters, when they want to oppose forms of trans-national criminality jeopardizing their collective interests. “This premise, …, helps clarify why the Torture Convention sets out the requirement of the involvement of state officials for torture. … The requirement of a ‘state official’ is therefore Page 35