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The States will not be offering a pardon to police officers convicted of theft during the Occupation - but plans are being made to honour their memory during next year's 80th Liberation Day commemorations and celebrations instead.
The 'Robin Hood' policemen, were convicted of stealing food from the Germans to feed the island's civilians.
17 officers were brought before the German Military Court and Guernsey’s Royal Court with sixteen deported to brutal labour camps in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Not all of the policemen survived their ordeal and those who returned home at the end of the war were often suffering from debilitating diseases and life-changing injuries, yet they were treated as criminals and denied their pensions.
Deputy Gavin St Pier has been leading political efforts to have their convictions overturned in recent years.
In the States he asked Policy and Resources for an update on work it was doing to secure a pardon for the men - after the committee said it would bring a policy letter on the matter to the Assembly this year.
However, the Chief Minister has now said that a pardon is not appropriate in this case and that the policy letter will not be forthcoming. Instead, work is focused on offering a "conciliatory statement" during next year's 80th Liberation Day events.
Pictured: Deputy Gavin St Pier posed questions in the States' Assembly this week, followed by Deputies Adrian Gabriel and Peter Ferbrache.
Deputy Lyndon Trott said that during the consultation work into issuing the pardons it was agreed that a political policy letter "was not going to address this issue satisfactorily".
Further, he said that "there were strong and differing views to respect" and that "having considered the responses received (during the consultation), the (P&R) Committee, is of the view that the most appropriate approach to address the issue would be to make a conciliatory statement, which could form part of the 80th anniversary of Liberation Day."
Deputy Trott also said that as theft is still a criminal offence, a pardon is not appropriate for the 16 men affected, despite their good intentions in stealing food to feed starving civilians.
"...statutory pardons have been made in the past for historic offences which, by the time they were considered again, were no longer criminal offences. This included cowardice in World War One and homosexuality," he said.
"The issue under consideration here is the treatment of certain people convicted of criminal offences such as theft and the handling of stolen goods by the Civil Courts during the Occupation. Burglary, theft, and handling stolen goods are still criminal offences which make a statutory pardon inappropriate.
"The situation is also different from the recent Post Office Horizon issue, where unsafe convictions were quashed, allowing a gateway for any currently prosecuted acts of theft or fraud to remain valid. The same approach cannot be applied directly to the incidence of theft during the Occupation, but once again, I reiterate my personal regret for the suffering that those individuals and their families have suffered."
Answering a further question from Deputy Adrian Gabriel, Deputy Trott confirmed that descendants of the convicted officers have been indirectly involved in the decision making through an interlocutor.
Deputy Peter Ferbrache queried how a pardon can not be deemed appropriate when confessions were beaten out of the police officers by German Officers. He also said that the Royal Court dealt with them in a "completely inappropriate way" in 1942.
Deputy Trott reiterated that what he had previously said was based on current legal advice.
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