War treason is a term used to categorise "the commission of hostile acts, except armed resistance and possibly espionage, by persons other than members of the armed forces properly identified as such."
According to the 1914 edition of the British ''Manual of Military Law'',
espionage could be considered war treason if it was committed by people acting openly outside the zone of military operations. It defined war treason widely as including "obtaining, supplying and carrying of information to the enemy" or attempting to do so.
Sabotage was also considered war treason, as was aiding the escape of
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
. Those accused of the offence were entitled to a trial before a military or civil court, with sentences up to the
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
being imposed.
During
World War I, the German spy
Carl Hans Lody
Carl Hans Lody, alias Charles A. Inglis (20 January 1877 – 6 November 1914; name occasionally given as Karl Hans Lody), was a reserve officer of the Imperial German Navy who spied in the United Kingdom in the first few months of the First Wo ...
was tried and executed by the United Kingdom in November 1914 under this juridical basis.
[Simpson, p. 81]
References
{{reflist
Military law
Treason