GUIDE ON ANTI-TORTURE LEGISLATION public authorities and other persons acting in an official capacity from directly committing, instigating, inciting, encouraging, acquiescing in or otherwise participating or being complicit in acts of torture as defined in the Convention”.63 As part of the article 4 obligation, the Committee has clearly stated that a State party shall make the “necessary modifications […] to explicitly criminalise attempts to commit torture and acts constituting complicity or participation in torture and to define them as acts of torture.”64 For these forms of liability, the Committee does not draw a distinction between the gravity of the offence; “any person committing such an act, whether perpetrator or accomplice, shall be personally held responsible before the law.”65 The Committee has also referenced the terminology in article 1, and has developed a recommendation specifically to criminalise the act by a public official of instigating, consenting, or acquiescing to torture.66 67 New Zealand criminalises all these modes of liability in its Crimes of Torture Act: “(1) Every person is liable upon conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years who, being a person to whom this section applies or acting at the instigation or with the consent or acquiescence of such a person, whether in or outside New Zealand, (a) commits an act of torture; or (b) does or omits an act for the purpose of aiding any person to commit an act of torture; or (c) abets any person in the commission of an act of torture; or (d) incites, counsels, or procures any person to commit an act of torture. (2) Every person is liable upon conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years who, being a person to whom this section applies or acting at the instigation or with the consent or acquiescence of such a person, whether in or outside New Zealand, (a) attempts to commit an act of torture; or (b) conspires with any other person to commit an act of torture; or (c) is an accessory after the fact to an act of torture.”67 In the Philippines, the Anti-Torture Act provides for different types of liability depending of the status of the perpetrator: “Any person who actually participated or induced another in the commission of torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment or who cooperated in the execution of the act of torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment by previous or simultaneous acts shall be liable as principal. Any superior military, police or law enforcement officer or senior government official who issued an order to any lower ranking personnel to commit torture for whatever purpose shall be held equally liable as principals. The immediate commanding officer of the unit concerned (…) and other law enforcement agencies shall be held liable as a principal to the crime of torture or other cruel or inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment for any act or omission, or negligence committed by him/her that shall have led, assisted, abetted or allowed, whether directly or indirectly, the commission thereof by his/ her subordinates. If he/she has knowledge of or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment shall be committed, is being committed, or has been committed by his/her subordinates or by others within his/her area of responsibility 63 CAT, General Comment N°2, op. cit. 1, § 17. CAT, Concluding observations on Gabon (17 January 2013), UN Doc. CAT/C/GAB/CO/1, § 8; UN Committee against Torture, Concluding observations on Morocco (21 December 2011), UN Doc. CAT/C/MAR/CO/4, § 5. 64 CAT, Concluding observations on Guinea (20 June 2014), UN Doc. CAT/C/GIN/CO/1, § 7. 65 CAT, Concluding observations on Kyrgyzstan (20 December 2013), UN Doc. CAT/C/KGZ/CO/2, § 6; UN Committee against Torture, Concluding observations on Andorra (20 December 2013), UN Doc. CAT/C/AND/CO/1, § 6. 66 67 24 New Zealand, Crimes of Torture Act of 1989, op. cit. 25, section 3.