Three nuns have been barred from using the Nuremberg and international law defenses at a trial stemming from their raid on a Minuteman III nuclear weapons silo in Weld County.

The three cut down fences at the silo, used their own blood to form six crosses on the silo lid and used ball-peen hammers to hit the tracks and lid of the silo. They entered the silo grounds at 7:35 a.m. on Oct. 6.

The three Dominican sisters - Carol Gilbert, 55; Jackie Hudson, 68; and Ardeth Platte, 66 - say they are doing what the German people didn't do before World War II: standing up against a government with evil intent.

They claim the international war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg recognized that an individual is obliged under international law to violate domestic law to prevent continuing crimes against humanity. They claim the Minuteman is a first-strike weapon prohibited by international law.

But U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn, in a detailed and often scathing 32-page opinion, said the nuns are "seeing ghosts under every bed."

"Under their skewed (reasoning), an individual gains the privilege to violate domestic law simply by being a citizen of a nation that possesses nuclear weapons, because under the defendants' logic any citizen of a country possessing nuclear weapons is guilty of a war crime," Blackburn wrote.

"Such guilt by citizenship would be unprecedented."

Blackburn not only prohibited the nuns from using such defenses but every other defense they sought to raise.

The nuns go on trial Monday on charges of obstruction of the national defense and injuring the property of the United States.

Defense lawyer Anabel Dwyer, an advisory counsel to Platte, said Blackburn has improperly put the burden on the defense.

"He seems to be precluding the defendants any defense at all," Dwyer said Tuesday. "And he clearly can't do that."

The sisters believe the country is bent on controlling the earth, water and sky by military force.

They claim that when they entered the silo grounds they found a "missile ready for a nuclear first-strike intending to unleash 300 kilotons of heat, blast and radiation, at least 20 times that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs," their court filings show.

They said they had a duty to act because the Minuteman III is an instrument of "horrific crimes."