“… Vuckovic clearly committed abuses against plaintiffs under official authority. In light of the de facto governmental authority of the Republika Srpska, under which Vuckovic served as a soldier, and the control exerted over it by the Serbian government, Vuckovic may be considered also to have been acting under the authority of a ‘foreign nation’.” (at p 1347) (Emphasis added) In this second passage, the court was considering whether the claim also satisfied the requirement of TVPA that the torture be “under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation”. This does not detract in any way from the court’s earlier conclusion that the conduct was that of persons acting in an official capacity. On the contrary, the court’s reasoning supports the view that conduct of a de facto governmental authority can constitute official torture within article 1, UNCAT. 69. The appellant also relies on further US cases concerning the scope of application of ATCA, in particular the requirement that the tort alleged should have been committed “in violation of the law of nations”. Tel-Oren v Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F 2d 774, 233 US App DC 384 (1984), a decision which pre-dated UNCAT, concerned the murder of civilians in a terrorist attack on a bus in Israel in March 1978. The three members of the court, for different reasons, provided support for the view that torture claims against non-State actors were not within the jurisdictional grant of ATCA. In particular, Judge Edwards considered that the Palestine Liberation Organisation was not a recognised member of the community of nations and that there was insufficient consensus in 1984 that torture by private actors violated international law. In Ali Shafi v Palestinian Authority 642 F 3d 1088 (2011), the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit endorsed this approach concluding, similarly, that in 2011 the appellants in that case had not demonstrated a consensus in the law of nations that torture by private actors violates international law. These cases were concerned with whether under ATCA there is a cause of action for torture against non-State actors. Neither case was directly concerned with the question whether the conduct of an individual acting on behalf of a quasi-governmental entity which is in de facto control of territory may give rise to official torture under UNCAT. Nor, in my respectful view, does the decision of the US Supreme Court in Sosa v Alvarez-Machain 542 US 692 (2004) on the scope of ATCA cast any light on the present issue. 70. Finally, in this regard, I should refer to United States of America v Belfast (US Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, 15 July 2010) which concerned a series of constitutional challenges to the Torture Act, 18 USC para 2340-2340A. In rejecting a challenge brought on the ground that the official conduct requirement of the Act used the phrase “under color of law” rather than the phrase “in an official capacity” as found in UNCAT, the Court of Appeals referred to the view of the Senate Page 34