 While the experts Arthur Baumgarten and C. A. Loosli declared the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a plagiarism and a forgery produced by helpers of the tsarist Russian Okhrana, anti-Semitic expert Ulrich Fleischhauer claimed that they were genuine but of uncertain authorship, possibly composed by the Jewish author Ahad Haam and passed at a secret meeting of Bnai Brith which purportedly took place in 1897 during the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland.Eventually, the defendants Theodor Fischer and Silvio Schnell were sentenced by judge Walter Meyer in his verdict, while three other defendants were acquitted.The penalty was a quite symbolic fine