A/HRC/13/39/Add.5 44. While I fully respect and understand the fundamental security challenges with which many States are confronted, and express my full support for their legitimate and lawful endeavours to protect their citizens, it is somewhat astounding and instructive to see how many alleged “exceptional circumstances”, “unique situations” etc. were presented to me in the course of the last five years. In many of my fact-finding missions, Government officials indicated that their country was currently confronted with an unrivalled and critical security challenge ranging from “global war on terror”, internal armed conflict and secessionist movements to high rates of violent crime and drug offences. Against this background, officials of all ranks at least implicitly put the absoluteness and non-derogability of the torture prohibition into question and on some occasions portrayed it as an academic or theoretical, if not naïve ideal which lacks applicability and a sense of realism. 45. I have the honour to be entrusted with the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture during a period of time in which the absolute and non-derogable nature of the prohibition of torture was put into question for the first time since the existence of the United Nations, even in democratic States. It is and remains my firm belief that it was for good philosophical and historical reasons that States agreed in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust that the prohibition of torture should be guaranteed under international human rights law as one of the few absolute and non-derogable rights. History, including the recent context of the global “war on terror” shows that putting the absolute prohibition of torture in question means opening Pandora’s Box. The present Administration of the United States of America has taken decisive steps to reverse this policy, but it will take many years until the global damage that was inflicted on the prohibition of torture as a rule of jus cogens is repaired. (d) Torture as a crime 46. The gravity of torture finds a further consideration in the obligation, rare for a human rights treaty, to “ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law”. This provision in article 4 CAT requires the criminal responsibility of any person who directly or through “complicity or participation” inflicted or only attempted to inflict torture. States have to make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature. 47. The formulation “complicity or participation” also includes the incitement, instigation, superior orders or instructions, consent, and acquiescence, in line with the definition of torture in article 1(1). A study of the traveaux préparatoires of the Convention also makes it clear that concealment, such as hiding or destructing evidence of torture, has to be made an offence under criminal law. Superior officials shall be held accountable under criminal law for their complicity or acquiescence if they knew or should have known that torture was inflicted by personnel under their command.18 48. Domestic criminal law has to cover all possible cases falling under the definition of torture as stipulated in the Convention. While it remains at the discretion of each Government how it wishes to live up to this requirement, my experience during the last five years leads me to the conclusion that it is difficult, if not impossible, to cover all the different aspects included in article 1 without explicitly incorporating this definition into the domestic criminal code.19 49. Hand in hand with the obligation to criminalize torture goes the obligation to punish perpetrators with sentences commensurate to the gravity of the crime. Torture is not a 18 19 16 On the concept of acquiescence see also the case of Hajrizi Dzemajl et al. v. Yugoslavia, No. 161/2000, para. 9.2 and 10. See below, article 16, 2.2. CAT/C/SR.268, para. 2.