Well, even if it is war time, human laws should still apply...

Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
I mean, collaborators, spies, traitors can usually be sentenced to death and executed fairly immediately.. If the treacherous actions of one countryman can jeopardise the entire country, and if you are killing the enemy in the battlefield anyway.... then there doesn't seem to be much logic in sparing somebody who has collaborated with the enemy.
The thing is, when I think of partisans I usually imagine WWII. When the Germans occupied part of Russia, many people went into forests and became partisans. They were not traitors in the eyes of Russians but heroes because they continued to fight. And the Germans couldn't call them traitors either -- they didn't owe any allegiance to them. The locals were likely to help them of course, for which whole villages would be executed as a reprisal. Aweful death awaited partisans if they were captured -- they would be tortured and hanged in the main street as a warning.
You can read this artcle, for example, about the so-called "Young Guard" -- there's a famous book and a film about them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_G...et_resistance)

Photos http://rodohforum.yuku.com/topic/2558?page=1

Even if we are not talking about that particular war -- let's say Americans in Aghanistan (or Soviets -- we were there for ten years too) -- how can these soldiers execute Afghans who, say, collaborate with their countrymen -- even if those countrymen are terrorists/extremists? Afghan people don't owe allegiance either to Americans or Russians, they can't be called traitors.

Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
However I for one hope that war-time laws will never againt be needed in Europe - hopefully it's a strictly hypothetical question.
You hope that. I don't have all that much faith in humanity. History shows that we learn nothing fom history. You would've thought the middle of the 20th century was not Middle Ages -- yet WWII happens to be the bloodiest war ever.