taken by the East Coast judges who had presided over earlier trials in the series. In particular the judges were inclined to treat the prosecution case with considerable suspicion. The judges ruled that captured partisan or guerrilla resistance fighters could never expect to be given the protected status of prisoners of war, and could lawfully be executed without trial. Furthermore, the judges departed explicitly from the Nuremberg Principles established in the International Military Tribunal, in ruling that the killing of hostages and reprisal killings of innocent individual civilians might be lawful if undertaken by an occupying power as a response to resistance forces engaging in partisan warfare, albeit subject to stringent constraints. Following the judgement, Justice Charles Wennerstrum gave an interview to the Chicago Tribune in which he accused the prosecution of failing "to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, [and] aloof from personal ambitions for convictions" and dismissed the whole Nuremberg exercise as "victors justice". He proposed that many of the German Jewish emigrants employed in the prosecution office were of suspect loyalty to the United States; "The whole atmosphere here is unwholesome.... Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers are employed who became Americans only in recent years; whose backgrounds were embedded in Europe's hatreds and prejudices." Defendants I — Indicted G — Indicted and found guilty Verdict The tribunal had to deal with two pressing questions: Could partisans be "lawful belligerents" and thus entitled the protected status of prisoners of war; and was that status dependent on whether they fought in uniform or wearing distinctive military insignia? Could taking (and potentially killing) civilian hostages, and retrospective reprisals against civilians, be lawful as a "defense" against guerrilla attacks and partisan warfare? On the question of partisans, the tribunal concluded that under the current laws of war (the Hague Convention No. IV from 1907), the partisan fighters in southeast Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of the convention even though most had worn distinctive military insignia in combat (a Red Star sewn onto a uniform cap) and many had fought in military uniform of one form or another; as most fought as guerrillas and as such could not consistently conform to all the conditions of belligerency laid down in the Hague Regulations for regular forces. Irregular forces who engaged in guerrilla warfare - even if they did so in uniform and carried their arms openly in combat -