Conflict of laws – Tort. Where a state stood to be held to account for acts of violence against its citizens, it should be held to account, in its own courts, by its own law and should not escape liability by reference to a colonial law which it had made itself. Accordingly, the Queen's Bench Division held that English law applied to determine whether torts had been committed against the claimants by the defendant Secretaries of State by assaults, beatings, rape and other acts of violence allegedly inflicted during the Cyprus emergency by agents of the UK government and the then Colonial Administration of Cyprus.