92 three civilians “were found guilty [of murder] because every one of them had in one form or another taken part in the ill-treatment which eventually led to the death of the victims, though against none of the accused had it been exactly proved that they had individually shot nor given the blows which caused the death”. 259 209. It would seem warranted to infer from the arguments of the parties and the verdict that the court upheld the notion that all the accused who were found guilty took part, in various degrees, in the killing; not all of them intended to kill but all intended to participate in the unlawful ill-treatment of the prisoners of war. Nevertheless they were all found guilty of murder, because they were all “concerned in the killing”. The inference seems therefore justified that the court assumed that the convicted persons who simply struck a blow or implicitly incited the murder could have foreseen that others would kill the prisoners; hence they too were found guilty of murder. 260 210. A similar position was taken by a United States military court in Kurt Goebell et al. (also called the Borkum Island case). On 4 August 1944, a United States Flying Fortress was forced down on the German island of Borkum. Its seven crew members were taken prisoner and then forced to march, under military guard, through the streets of Borkum. They were first made to pass between members of the Reich’s Labour Corps, who beat them with shovels, upon the order of a German officer of the Reichsarbeitsdienst. They were then struck by civilians on the street. Later on, while passing through another street, the mayor of Borkum shouted at them inciting the mob to kill them “like dogs”. They were 259 UNWCC, vol. 1, p. 91. In addition to Heyer and the escort (Koenen), three civilians were also convicted. The first of the accused civilians, Boddenberg, admitted to have struck one of the airmen on the bridge, after one of them had already been thrown over the bridge, knowing “that the motives of the crowd against them [the airmen] were deadly, and yet he joined in” (Transcript in Public Record Office, London, WO 235/58, p. 67; copy on file with International Tribunal’s Library); the second, Kaufer, was found to have “beaten the airmen” and taken “an active part” in the mob violence against them. Additionally, it was alleged that he tried to pull the rifle away from a subordinate officer to shoot the airmen below the bridge and that he called out words to the effect that the airmen deserved to be shot (ibid., pp. 67-68). The third, Braschoss, was seen hitting one of the airmen on the bridge, descending beneath the bridge to throw the airman, who was still alive, into the stream. He and an accomplice were further alleged to have thrown another of the airmen from the bridge (ibid., p. 68). Two of the accused civilians, Sambol and Hartung, were acquitted; the former because the blows he was alleged to have inflicted were neither particularly severe nor proximate to the airmen’s death (comprising one of the earliest to be inflicted) and the latter because it was not proved beyond reasonable doubt that he actually took part in the affray (ibid., pp. 66-67, UNWCC, vol. I, p. 91). 260 The charge, in a strict legal sense, was the commission of a war crime in violation of the laws and usages of war for being “concerned in the killing” of the airmen rather than murder as this was “not a trial under English law” (ibid., at p. 91). For all intents and purposes, however, the charge appeared to be treated as a murder charge, as it appeared to have been accepted in the course of the proceedings that “as long as everyone realised Case No.: -94-1-A 15 July 1999