FIVE pro-Palestinian activists who damaged a factory belonging to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in the southern city of Ulm are being tried behind bulletproof glass at Stuttgart’s maximum-security Stammheim prison.
The courtroom is the same one used for the Red Army Faction trials nearly 50 years ago.
The five, known as the Ulm 5, are Daniel Tatlow-Devally of Ireland, Zo Hailu and Crow Tricks of Britain, Leandra Valenzuela of Spain and Vi Kovarbasic of Germany, all based in Berlin.
On 8th September 2025 they broke into the Elbit plant, destroyed equipment and sprayed ‘free Palestine’ and ‘baby killers’ on the walls.
They filmed the action on body cameras and posted it online, saying they had acted ‘to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza’ and to expose Germany’s complicity.
No one was hurt, and the five waited at the scene to be arrested. Prosecutors put the damage at 1.04 million euros.
They are charged with trespass, criminal damage and membership of a criminal organisation, Palestine Action Germany.
A further charge of using ‘symbols of an unconstitutional or terrorist organisation’, which prosecutors link to Hamas, rests on slogans including ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’
In court, the defendants sit behind a double layer of bulletproof glass that cuts them off from their lawyers and the public gallery.
Spectators sit behind a further pane after being patted down in private.
Only accredited journalists may bring pens into court, which the judge and prosecutor have described as potential ‘slash and stab weapons’. Armed guards stand watch.
Lynn Boylan, the Irish MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine, called the proceedings a ‘show trial’.
‘I initially thought the parents of the Ulm 5 were simply exaggerating because they’re not used to the German court system, but what I experienced on this parliamentary trip really shocked me,’ she told the United States-based Drop Site.
‘We were not allowed to bring in a pen and paper and take our own notes.’ She said she’d had to ask permission to take a handkerchief into the courtroom.
‘Daniel is incarcerated for 23 hours a day in what is essentially solitary confinement and that can have a serious impact on a person’s mental health,’ Boylan said.
‘Daniel and the four others, they’re not violent criminals, and yet they’re being treated as if they are the worst of the worst offenders in a prison system. They should be out on bail.’
The five are held in five separate prisons and are forbidden to communicate with one another.
They are allowed one hour of visits a month, monitored by guards and translators, and families may not discuss the case.
The trial opened on 27 April and was scheduled for 16 hearings over about three and a half months. In mid-May, presiding judge Katherin Lauchstädt added 28 more dates running into January 2027.
She refused media requests to interview the defendants, arguing that it would help spread information between them.
On the first day, the defendants were brought in handcuffed and seated apart from their 11 lawyers. The lawyers refused to sit until their clients were brought forward.
The judge refused them the floor and switched off their microphones, and the entire defence team walked out, forcing a two-hour recess.
Nina Onèr, who represents Zo Hailu, said Stammheim’s system requires lawyers to press a button and wait for the court to switch on their microphones.
Because of it, the defence could not file a single motion that day. One of those motions sought the court’s recusal, which is lost if it is not lodged at the proper stage.
‘The intention is to build the image of five extremely dangerous individuals that are not allowed to speak to their lawyers freely, even in the breaks,’ Onèr said.
‘We have never experienced any such a thing that the court won’t even let us file our motions.’ Walking out, she said, was ‘our only chance to stop the indictment from being read and us losing our rights’.
The defence says the judge has since rejected almost every motion with little or no legal justification.
The five are not charged under Section 129a, the terrorism provision of the German criminal code. ‘We don’t have a Section 129a case, and yet these are the measures that the court is pushing through the courthouse that are even extreme when it is a 129a case,’ Onèr said.
In a Section 129a trial running at the same time, members of the far-right Reichsbürger movement are accused of plotting to overthrow the government and of shooting police officers.
They are allowed to sit with their lawyers, and some have been released from pre-trial detention.
‘This definitely sets a new kind of precedent,’ said Sophia Hoffinger of the European Legal Support Centre. She said members of the climate group Last Generation face similar criminal organisation charges, but none have been held on remand or kept from consulting their lawyers privately.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has labelled the Ulm 5 ‘extremists’ before any verdict.
It has also accused the legal aid group 3ezwa of ‘prisoner assistance extremism’ for supporting them, which Hoffinger called ‘precriminalisation’.
Elbit, Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer, makes artillery shells, tank rounds, surveillance equipment, drones and F-35 components, many of which have been used in the genocide in Gaza.
Political economist Shir Hever said the Ulm plant develops laser sensors for terrain mapping and software-defined radios that form the Israeli military’s main communications platform.
‘This is where Germany plays a very important role in the supply chain,’ he said. Elbit Systems Germany did not respond to Drop Site’s request for comment.
A report by Forensis Berlin found that Germany approved about 1.41 billion euros in military export licences to Israel between October 2023 and June 2026 – 800 million euros of it in the first half of this year alone.
Ihsan Adel, chair of Law for Palestine, is working on Nicaragua’s case against Germany at the International Court of Justice. ‘Germany has a legal obligation to prevent and punish genocide,’ he said.
German prosecutors are legally bound to investigate exonerating as well as incriminating evidence. The defence says prosecutor Ronny Stengel has ignored Elbit’s role in Israel’s war crimes.
Instead, Stengel argues the action was antisemitic, claiming the words ‘baby killers’ invoked the blood libel because Elbit is a ‘Jewish-owned company’.
On 19 June the defence introduced an investigation by the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant into evidence that Israeli forces deliberately shot Palestinian children in the head and chest.
The judge ordered it translated aloud into German, and the translators were visibly overcome as they read.
Matthias Goldmann, professor of international law at EBS University, said the five met the criteria for civil disobedience, including non-violence, since ‘violence begins when people are harmed’.
He also cited their willingness to accept punishment. ‘I believe the Ulm 5 do meet the criteria of civil disobedience,’ he said.
Daniel’s mother, Mimi Tatlow-Golden, said Daniel is locked up 23 hours a day in ‘a five-by-two-metre cell’ with a frosted window that cannot be opened. For five months the family could not touch Daniel during visits.
That changed only after Irish TD Richard Boyd Barrett helped secure a meeting with the German ambassador, and the family was then told the rule had been a clerical error.
‘Daniel had no social contact, no physical contact, and combined that with almost no intellectual contact since they were refused the right to have books sent to them. It’s torture if you think about it,’ she said.
Crow’s sibling, Tessi Tricks, said that when Crow complained about threats from a cellmate, guards replied: ‘It’s not our issue unless we see blood on the ground.’
Boylan said Germany had taken a heavy-handed approach against all Palestine solidarity. ‘They want to send a message to the wider public that you know if you do what the Ulm 5 did, there’s going to be very heavy consequences,’ she said.
