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The Ulm 5 Trial Dramatizes Germany’s Complicity with Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
Five activists who vandalized an Elbit Systems factory aim to put Germany and the Israeli weapons company on trial.
STUTTGART, Germany—Nearly fifty years after the infamous Red Army Faction trials, Germany’s maximum-security Stammheim Prison is once again the setting of a high-profile case that calls into question the conduct of the German state. This time, however, the defendants are five international pro-Palestinian activists charged with vandalizing a factory in the German city of Ulm owned by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.
On September 8, 2025, the five Berlin-based activists, now known as the Ulm 5, broke into Elbit’s facility and carried out acts of vandalism that they recorded using body cameras and posted online. They destroyed equipment and spray painted “free Palestine” and “baby killers” on the walls. In their videos, the activists—citizens of Britain, Ireland, Spain, and Germany—say they carried out their direct action “to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza” and to call attention to Germany’s complicity with it.
No one was injured in the action, which allegedly caused €1.04 million in damages, and the protesters remained at the scene to be arrested. Even so, German prosecutors have clearly decided to treat the Ulm 5 with unusual severity, charging them with membership in a criminal organization, Palestine Action Germany, in addition to trespassing and criminal damage. An additional charge concerns the use of “symbols of an unconstitutional or terrorist organisation”—referring to Hamas—based on the defendants’ use of slogans including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The courtroom itself has been staged for maximum drama, as if the proceedings concerned dangerous criminals rather than nonviolent protesters. The five defendants sit behind a double layer of bulletproof glass that separates them from both their legal team and the public gallery.
Members of the public and press sit behind another layer of bulletproof glass and must pass through an intense security process that includes an invasive pat down behind closed doors. Only accredited journalists may bring writing utensils into the court room, since pens and pencils could be used as “slash and stab weapons,” according to the judge and prosecutor. Heavily armed security personnel stand watch.
Lynn Boylan, an Irish member of the European Parliament who chairs that body’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine, described the security theater surrounding the case as 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,” Boylan told Drop Site. “We were not allowed to bring in a pen and paper and take our own notes,” Boylan said, adding that she had to ask permission to take a handkerchief into the courtroom.
“My colleagues visited the Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally, in prison and they were concerned with the mind games that the prison staff were playing with Daniel,” Boylan said. “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. It is completely unnecessary. 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.”
Precriminalization
The logistics of the case seem calculated to impose hardship on the activists, four of whom are not German citizens. Tatlow-Devally and the other four defendants—Zo Hailu and Crow Tricks from Britain, Spain’s Leandra Valenzuela, and Vi Kovarbasic, from Germany—are being held in five different prisons and are not allowed to communicate with one another. They receive a single hour of visitation per month that is heavily monitored and accompanied by translators and prison guards. Families and loved ones are not allowed to talk about the case during their visits.
The trial was initially scheduled to take place over 16 hearings spanning approximately three and a half months. In mid-May, however, shortly after proceedings began, the presiding judge, Katherin Lauchstädt, unilaterally added an additional 28 hearing dates extending into January 2027.
Lauchstädt rejected a Drop Site request to interview the five defendants in prison, arguing that doing so would help spread information between the defendants and would therefore interfere with the trial.
On April 27, the first day of the trial, the five defendants entered in handcuffs and were seated separately from their lawyers behind the bulletproof barrier. The arrangement immediately triggered a confrontation. The 11-member defense team refused to take their seats, demanding that their clients be brought forward so they could communicate with them directly and confidentially.
A chaotic standoff between the court and the defense ensued as the lawyers repeatedly attempted to challenge the seating arrangement and raise procedural motions, while the judge refused to give them the floor, and eventually turned off their microphones. The legal team all left the courtroom at that point in protest, prompting a two hour recess.
Attorney Nina Onèr, who represents Zo Hailu, described to Drop Site News how the courtroom itself contributed to the breakdown in proceedings. Unlike in a conventional courtroom where lawyers can address the judge directly, the Stammheim facility requires lawyers to press a button to request permission to speak, after which the court must activate their microphones. On the first day, she said, the court refused to activate the defense microphones at all, preventing the lawyers from formally submitting even a single motion.
“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 told Drop Site.
Among the motions the defense sought to file was a motion for recusal, asking the court to remove itself from the case over concerns of bias. Onèr stressed that such a motion must be submitted at the appropriate stage of proceedings or the defense can lose its right to raise it later.
“We have never experienced any such a thing that the court won’t even let us file our motions,” Onèr said. With the indictment about to be read, Onèr said the defense was left with what it saw as its only remaining option: collectively leaving the courtroom. “Our only chance to stop the indictment from being read and us losing our rights,” she said, “was to collectively leave the courtroom as the trial cannot continue without us.”
The progress of the trial has been slow. Procedural motions are routinely presented only for the judge to reject nearly every single one with very little or no legal justification, according to the Ulm 5’s lawyers. Consistent breaks disrupt the flow of evidence, although sometimes these breaks are called by the legal team due to their inability to speak with their clients and understand their wants while court is in session.
In contrast to some of the Palestine Action cases in the UK, the Ulm 5 have not been charged with terrorism under Section 129a of the German criminal code. Onèr said the effort to censor and monitor communication between the defendants and the defense that could apply to terror cases should not apply here.
“We don’t have a Section 129a case, and yet these are the measures that the court is pushing through the court house that are even extreme when it is a 129a case,” she said.
For comparison, in a Section 129a terrorism trial that’s happening at the same time, the defendants—members of the extremist Reichsbürger movement accused of attempting to overthrow the German government, who allegedly shot German police officers—are allowed to sit with their defense team, and some have even been released from pre-trial detention.
“This definitely sets a new kind of precedent,” Sophia Hoffinger, a monitor project officer at the European Legal Support Center told DropSite. “There are very few comparable prolonged forms of pretrial detention in Section 129 cases.”
Hoffinger said that similar charges have been made against members of the climate justice group, Last Generation, for belonging to a criminal organization. Yet “none of the members have been forced under the same conditions as the Ulm 5 defendants,” she added. “There’s no pretrial detention [in that case] and none of the refusal to allow defendants to consult with their lawyers privately.”
Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency has not only described the Ulm 5 as extremists, even before they have been convicted, but also accused the legal aid organization 3ezwa of being involved in “prisoner assistance extremism” solely because it has provided support for the trial. Hoffinger described this as a form of “precriminalization.”
“Just because a support structure expresses political support for five people who have not been convicted of anything yet and who are still on trial shows the extent of this precriminalization,” Hoffinger said. “This is a wider trend that Germany is imposing because of expressed support for Palestine. They have politicized this case by even using their own intelligence agencies to interfere and accelerate the accusations against the defendants because of their economic interests in delegitimizing the Ulm 5,” she added.
Elbit and Israel’s Genocide
As Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems has become a frequent target of direct actions and the BDS movement internationally. The company produces a wide range of military equipment—including artillery shells, tank rounds, surveillance equipment, drones, and parts for F-35 jets—many of which have been deployed during the genocide in Gaza.
In Germany, Elbit’s subsidiary produces highly specialised components for laser targeting and communications systems.
Political economist Shir Hever, an expert on the Israeli arms industry, said Elbit’s factory in Ulm develops laser sensors used for gathering digital information and terrain mapping as well as software defined radios that serve as the primary communication platform for the Israeli military.
“This is where Germany plays a very important role in the supply chain, as the same radios and sensors manufactured and developed in Ulm” are used in Gaza, Hever said.
Elbit Systems Germany did not respond to a request for comment.
Under the German legal system, the public prosecutor is legally required to investigate both incriminating and potentially exonerating evidence. That has not happened in this case, and the defense argues the prosecution failed to adequately examine evidence that could potentially justify or contextualise the five defendants’ actions during the alleged break in. This includes investigating Elbit’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
Instead, the prosecutor, Ronny Stengel, alleges the action was motivated by antisemitism, an aggravating factor in Germany. Since the five sprayed “Baby Killers” on the walls of Elbit facility, the prosecution alleges, they contributed to the antisemitic trope of blood libel, since Elbit is a “Jewish-owned company.”
On June 19, the seventh trial date, the legal team introduced the Dutch newspaper Der Volksrant’s award-winning investigation, “What the Wounds Are Telling Us,” by Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra, detailing evidence that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted the heads and chests of Palestinian children in Gaza. This was done provide context for understanding the motivations of the defendants and how their conduct should be legally evaluated. Instead of allowing the defense to read out the article in English, however, the judge insisted that it be translated verbally into German, creating a dramatic moment during the proceedings as the translators became visibly emotional, choking up as the material was read aloud in court.
The defense’s argument ultimately depends on a question: What was the five activists’ direct action intended to stop? They argue that Elbit plays a direct role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and that the defendants’ vandalism was thus justified.
According to Ihsan Adel, chairperson of Law for Palestine and an attorney working on a case filed before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by Nicaragua, “Germany has a legal obligation to prevent and punish genocide.”
“Proceedings in the Nicaragua case against Germany before the ICJ, together with information available in the public record, indicate that Germany has not taken the measures required under international law to prevent genocide in Gaza,” Adel said.
According to a new report published by Forensis Berlin, Germany approved approximately €1.41 billion in licenses to export military equipment to Israel between October 2023 and June 2026, including €800 million in the first six months of 2026 alone.
The report documents that in 2023 and 2024, Germany ranked first and second respectively among the EU states that reported arms exports to Israel.
Matthias Goldmann, a professor of international law at EBS University, told Drop Site the defendants must meet five conditions for their action to be considered legitimate civil disobedience. The first would be a fundamental interest of the community, such as upholding and respecting international law. The second is that the action was undertaken without regard for their own self-interest, financial, or political gain. The third condition is non-violence, and Goldmann said that “violence begins when people are harmed,” and that vandalizing the Elbit Systems factory does not meet the threshold of a violent act. The fourth condition is that the action must attempt to impact or influence political discourse and correct the course of politics.
“We can disagree about what legitimate resistance is, as one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. So to get around that there are criteria,” Goldmann said.
The final criterion, Goldmann said, was that the Ulm 5 meet have demonstrated a willingness to accept their punishment, because they waited on site for the authorities to arrest them.
“Constitutional or international law alone is never self-sufficient; a legal order is subject to different criteria than just the state’s constitution, so I believe the Ulm 5 does meet the criteria of civil disobedience,” Goldmann said.
A Pattern of State Violence
Crow Tricks’ sibling Tessi Tricks told Drop Site how jarring it was for the families to see the defendants treated like dangerous criminals. “The five activists just don’t look threatening at all. So it’s like this quite confusing experience because you feel like they’re getting treated like they could set off a bomb or they could do something really awful, and it’s like they’re literally just standing there trying to have access to their lawyers, trying to be able to defend themselves. They’re being treated way disproportionately to what they’ve done,” Tessi said.
Tatlow-Devally’s mother, Mimi, said the conditions of his confinement amounted to torture. “Daniel seems to be very resilient even though they are locked for 23 hours a day in a five-by-two-meter cell. The window is frosted glass and can’t be opened, and outside is a concrete yard with no greenery of any kind.”
During visits, she said, her son was kept in a glass room and she was unable to hug her child for the five months she visited them. It was only after she involved Richard Boyd Barrett, a member of Ireland’s lower house of parliament, that a meeting was arranged with the German ambassador. The family was later told that the rule preventing Tatlow-Golden from physically touching their loved ones was due to a clerical error.
“When we first heard that things changed was when one day Daniel’s dad went to visit, and suddenly the visit was just in the family room, sitting at a table, and that was very emotional for Daniel. They had their first touch from a loved one in five months. 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,” Mimi said.
Tessi Tricks said the prison environment has been dangerous for Crow, who has been repeatedly moved into different cells and has experienced threats from cellmates.
“Each time Crow moves they get very stressed because they don’t know who they’re going to share a cell with. Last year was quite difficult for Crow when they were threatened by a cellmate. They complained to guards who responded by saying, ‘it’s not our issue unless we see blood on the ground,’” Tricks said.
According to the families, Germany is trying to make an example of the Ulm 5 for “offending Germany’s self-image as a good actor, and they are being punished for it,” said Mimi Tatlow-Golden.
“We see a thread from the prosecutor’s attitudes, from the charges that have been laid, to the decisions the judge has made and to the decision to make Stammheim the location of the trial depicting the five as dangerous people,” she added.
Boylan, the Irish member of the European Parliament, said that Germany’s violent treatment of the Ulm 5 is part of a wider pattern of violence against Palestinian solidarity.
“I think anybody looking at what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, you know, cannot deny what they see with their own eyes. So I think that that’s part of it that [Germany] have taken this very very heavy-handed approach against all Palestine solidarity,” she said. “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.”
(c) 2026, Drop Site News
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