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Second, the conduct of an individual is attributable to the state if he is de facto acting on behalf of the state. The 2001 Draft Articles stipulate that acts of non-state persons are attributable to a state if they are “in fact acting on the instructions of, or under the direction or control of, that State in carrying out the conduct.”37 The International Court of Justice also considered the responsibility for such “de facto agents” in Tehran Hostages. The Court found that private conduct “might be considered as itself directly imputable to the Iranian State only if it were established that, in fact, on the occasion in question the militants acted on behalf (of) the State, having been charged by some competent organ of the Iranian State to carry out a specific operation.”38 Since the evidence did not suffice to establish such a link between the Iranian state and the militants, the Court ultimately did not find Iran responsible on that ground.39 In the Nicaragua Case, 40 the Court specified the requirements under which de facto agency may be assumed. The Court held that “United States participation, even if preponderant or decisive, in the financing, organizing, training, supplying, and equipping of the contras, the selection of its military or paramilitary targets, and the planning of the whole of its operation, is still insufficient in itself, on the basis of the evidence in the possession of the Court, for the purposes of attributing to the United States the acts committed by the contras in the course of their military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.”41 Instead, the Court held that the United States was responsible for breaches of humanitarian law by the Contras only if it either had “effective control of the military or paramilitary operations in the course of which the alleged violations were committed” or if the “United States directed or enforced the perpetration of the acts contrary to human rights and humanitarian law alleged by the applicant State.”42 In his separate opinion, Judge Ago clarified that the latter cases re