Responsibility for Organs and Agents. The starting point for an assessment of state responsibility in this context is the basic rule that the state is responsible for the acts of the organs of the state, or its agents, as discussed in Chapter 3. Plainly intelligence agencies are part of the state apparatus and the state is responsible for their wrongful acts carried out by them, even if it should transpire that they acted beyond their authority. The same goes for police, customs officers or other state officials 220 UN Joint Study, p. 16-17. Notification of charges, trial without undue delay and the right to defend oneself are cited specifically. See also the working group on arbitrary detention which finds secret detention to violate fair trial: Opinions No. 5/2001 (E/CN.4/2002/77/ Add.1), para. 10 (iii) and No. 14/2009 (A/HRC/13/30/Add.1). 221 Xxx Xxxx’x ECHR case is brought by him and his wife, both as victims of the ERP. As noted above, this is common is cases of disappearance that the family members are treated as victims. 222 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (adopted 10 December 1948) Art. 14. 223 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted 28 July 1951, entered into force 22 April 1954); Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees 1967 (adopted 31 January 1967, entered into force 4 October 1967). Xxxxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx, ‘Extraordinary Rendition’, above, note 91, at 139-40. 224 ILC Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts’, November 2001, UN Doc Supplement No. 10 A/56/10 67 (hereinafter ‘ILC Articles on State Responsibility’). that may have collaborated in the ERP. In addition states are responsible for private actors outwith the state infrastructure where they acted under the ‘direction or control’ of the state.225
