Article 2. Obligation to Prevent Torture 95 upon proposal of the United States, there seems to be no other meaningful interpretation in line with the clear wording of this provision, read in conjunction with Article 16 CAT. Whether this interpretation is in line with the object and purpose of the Convention is highly doubtful but not relevant for the interpretation in accordance with the respective rules of the VCLT. 67   The prohibition to invoke a superior order as a defence in criminal proceedings goes back to Article 8 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg.172 It was also adopted in Article 33 of the Rome Statute of the ICC, which provides that a superior order shall not relieve the defendant of criminal responsibility unless the person was under a legal obligation to obey orders of the Government or the superior in question; the person did not know that the order was unlawful; and the order was not manifestly unlawful.173 68  According to Article 7(1)(f ) of the ICC Statute, torture qualifies as a crime against humanity ‘when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack’. In such circumstances, an order to practise torture is by definition ‘manifestly unlawful’. Consequently, such order cannot relieve the defendant of his or her criminal responsibility even if he or she was under a legal obligation to obey this order and did not know that the order was unlawful. 69   Article 2(3) CAT goes beyond Article 33 of the ICC Statute in so far as it applies also to individual cases of torture and does not provide for any exception. In other words, a legal obligation to obey orders and lack of knowledge that an order to practise torture is unlawful does not relieve the defendant of criminal responsibility. Article 2(3) simply states that no order from a superior whatsoever may be invoked as a justification of torture. 70  In its Concluding Observations, the Committee repeatedly stressed that Article 2(3) allows for no exception, that its provisions must be incorporated or transformed into domestic criminal law, that any domestic provision to the contrary must be abolished, and that the provision needs to be effectively implemented.174 Subordinates are thus to be held accountable individually in case of acts of torture that were committed. The issue was discussed in 1989 in relation to the well-​known individual cases of ORM, MM and MS v Argentina, in which relatives of Argentine citizens, who were allegedly tortured to death by Argentine military authorities during the ‘dirty war’ in 1976, claimed that the infamous ‘Full Stop Law’ [Ley de Punto Final] of December 1986 and ‘Due Obedience Act’ [Ley de Obediencia Debida] of June 1987 violated various provisions of the Convention.175 The obligations of Argentina under Article 2(3) CAT were allegedly violated by the Due Obedience Act, which presumed, without admitting proof to the contrary, that those persons who held lower military ranks at the time the crimes were committed were acting under superior orders. Although the Committee had to declare these complaints inadmissible ratione temporis, it expressed, in a strongly worded obiter   See above n 23; Burgers and Danelius (n 14) 124.   Article 33(2) specifies that for the purposes of this article, ‘orders to commit genocide or crimes against humanity are manifestly unlawful’. See eg the critical remarks by Paola Gaeta, ‘The Defence of Superior Orders:  The Statute of the International Criminal Court versus Customary International Law’ (1999) 10 European Journal of International Law 172; but see Charles Garraway, ‘Superior Orders and the International Criminal Court: Justice Delivered or Justice Denied’ (1999) 836 International Review of the Red Cross 785. 174   CAT/​C/​GC/​2 (n 1)  para 26. Also see Lebanon inquiry procedure, para 38, CAT/​C/​MRT/​CO/​1 (n 60) para 12; CAT/​C/​MAR/​CO/​4 (n 72) para 6. See also Ingelse (n 28) 266ff. 175   See above 3.2. 172 173 Zach