43 107. The Appeals Chamber considers that the Prosecution’s submissions are based on a misreading of the judgement of the International Court of Justice and a misapprehension of the doctrine of State responsibility on which that judgement is grounded. 108. Clearly, the Court did use two tests, but in any case its tests were conceived in a manner different from what is contended by the Prosecution, and in addition they were to a large extent set out along the lines dictated by customary international law. Admittedly, in its judgement, the Court did not always follow a straight line of reasoning (whereas it would seem that a jurisprudential approach more consonant with customary international law was taken by Judge Ago in his Separate Opinion). 126 In substance, however, the Court first evaluated those acts which, “in the submission of Nicaragua, involved the responsibility of the United States in a more direct manner”. 127 To this end it discussed two categories of individuals and their relative acts or transactions. First, the Court established whether the individuals concerned were officials of the United States, in which case their acts were indisputedly imputable to the State. Almost in the same breath the Court then discussed the different question of whether individuals not having the status of United States officials but allegedly paid by and acting under the instructions of United States organs, could legally involve the responsibility of that State. These individuals were Latin American operatives, the so-called UCLAs (“Unilaterally Controlled Latino Assets”). The Court then moved to ascertain whether the responsibility of the United States could arise “in a less direct manner” (to borrow from the phraseology used by the Court). It therefore set out to determine whether other individuals, the so-called contras, although not formally officials of the United States, acted in such a way and were so closely linked to that State that their acts could be legally attributed to it. 109. It would therefore seem that in Nicaragua the Court distinguished between three categories of individuals. The first comprised those who did have the status of officials: the members of the Government administration or armed forces of the United States. With regard to these individuals, the Court clearly started from a basic assumption, which the same Court recently defined as “a well-established rule of international law”, 128 that a State incurs responsibility for acts in breach of international obligations committed by individuals 126 See Nicaragua, pp. 187-190. See Nicaragua, para. 75. 128 See the Advisory Opinion delivered by the ICJ on 29 April 1999 in Difference Relating to the Immunity from Legal Process of a Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, para. 62. 127 Case No.: -94-1-A 15 July 1999