From the outside, 55 Eberhard-Finckh Street in Ulm, Germany, looks like a nondescript office building. If it weren’t for one of the signs that hangs on the façade, no one would be able to guess that it is inside there. the headquarters of the German subsidiary of Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers and the main supplier of weapons to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It was there, in that U-shaped building (or arch, if you look at it the other way around) where on September 8, 2025, five activists broke through one of the windows and then forced several doors and thus gained access to the company’s facilities, where they caused material damage to office and laboratory equipment. When they finished, they locked themselves in one of the rooms and called the Police and, when the agents arrived, they surrendered without resisting. They were, as they are now known, .
Since September, Crow Tricks (United Kingdom), Daniel Tatlow-Devally (Ireland), Leandra Rollo (Spain), Hanna ‘Zo’ Hailu (United Kingdom) and Vivien ‘Vi’ Kovarbasic (Germany) remain in preventive detention accused by the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s Office of damage to property, breaking and entering, membership in a criminal organization (Palestine Action Germany) and use of symbols of terrorist organizations for the use of the slogan “Since the river to the sea, Palestine will win.” They, for their part, limit their actions to an attempt to “interrupt the production of weapons that Israel uses to attack civilians,” and to “denounce that the German State allows and benefits from war crimes and crimes against humanity“. Just a few days after their action, on September 15, 2025, independent UN investigators They concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
In preventive detention, the five activists have been in isolation for 23 hours a day, being able to exercise, go out to the yard and contact other inmates for only one hour. Their relatives can visit them only twice a month and each meeting cannot last more than an hour. , ‘Zo’ Hailu’s mother has reported that she is also prohibited from talking about the case with her daughter. “To know how Zo is really doing, she has to pay attention to subtle cues due to the presence of the agents; she calls it reading between the lines,” the newspaper reported. When they go to court, they do so handcuffed and have to remain sheltered behind a glass booth, separated from their lawyers and watched by several members of the Police behind their backs.. All this, added to the fact that none of them have a criminal record, makes the defense think that they do not face a fair trial.
In Brussels, lawyer and Comuns MEP, Jaume Asens, met with lawyers and relatives of the activists and announced “a wide range of political and institutional initiatives in response to the imprisonment.” In addition to transferring the case to the Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI) of the European Parliament “to be examined from the perspective of human rights, procedural guarantees and the protection of civil liberties”, the MEP has demanded that the European Commission explain “what measures do you intend to adopt to guarantee respect for the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union”.
Asens has also requested the intervention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs due to the involvement in the case of a citizen with Spanish nationality. “In our opinion, Today there is a Spanish political prisoner in a German prison. We are not talking about a person imprisoned for committing violence, but about an activist persecuted for a protest action linked to the defense of human rights and solidarity with Palestine. The Spanish Government cannot remain impassive in the face of this situation and has the obligation to act,” he defended.
The extension of preventive detention not only worries his lawyers and relatives, but also organizations defending human rights, which see the use of article 129 of the German Penal Code (the one referring to membership in a terrorist organization). an excuse to sell them as a threat and at the same time use their case as a warning to others. The German Prosecutor’s Office also seeks that the acts of the Ulm Five be seen as anti-Semitism, a vision that one of them, Daniel, described in Court as “shameful.” “Resistance against occupation and mass murder are not anti-Semitism”he said before highlighting the “moral compass, kindness and resilience” of his Jewish stepfather.
In their few appearances in front of the court, the Ulm five have defended that they do and have done what should depend on the German Government, since No State can, according to international law, cooperate or collaborate with anyone who commits genocide.. Jaume Asens, in fact, wondered CTXT whether it should not be the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who sat “in the dock.” “The problem is not the Ulm Five. The problem is Germany. For decades, Germany built a political identity based on the promise of Never Again. However, Gaza has revealed that the country that swore it would never again collaborate with crimes of extermination is once again on the side of those who make them possible“wrote the MEP.
That idea of ”never again” was also remembered by Zo. “Theoretically,” the British woman explained, “an element of democracy is the separation of powers. Thus, While the executive branch, the German Government, has clearly chosen complicity, what will the judiciary choose in this case: complicity or ‘nie wieder’ (never again)?“This Monday, June 29, the five will appear in court again.
