Irgun announcement of the charges and verdict against two British spies, held in an Irgun-run prison and tried in an Irgun-administered court. The prisoners, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice, worked for the British Army Intelligence Corps. They were captured by the Irgun in response to the death sentences imposed on three Irgun fighters after the Acre prison break, Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar, executed on July 29, 1947. The next day, the Irgun executed Martin and Paice. The executions sparked anti-Jewish riots in Britain, and were widely condemned by the main Jewish institutions in the Yishuv and by David Ben-Gurion himself. The mainstream labor Zionist military organization, the Haganah, attempted to find and rescue the British prisoners. Nonetheless the execution, known as the Sergeants Affair, is credited with finally breaking the British will to remain in Palestine.