Ulm5 — Germany’s show trial sets a dangerous precedent

The Ulm5 trial concerns five human rights activists who caused damage to the Elbit Systems arms factory in the city of Ulm. These refusals join a growing list of irregularities and absurdities that have plagued the trial from the start — harsh treatment under prolonged pre-trial detention, the holding of the trial in a high-security courtroom, and the obstruction of defence motions and public scrutiny. In fact, the judge’s refusal undermines the defence’s constitutionally-protected right to present its evidence and witnesses. 

Since the day of their arrest and remand in custody on 8 September 2025, following the action carried out at the TDL laboratory at the Elbit Systems arms factory in Ulm, the five activists have been victims of vindictive German institutional violence. Leandra Rollo, Vi Kovarbasic, Hanna “Zo” Hailu, Daniel Tatlow-Devally and Crow Tricks face charges not only of destruction of private property and breaking and entering, but also of being members of a criminal organisation. 

The lawyers, family members, friends, journalists, members of various parliaments and legal observers who have attended any of the 24 hearings in this trial have agreed that, at the very least, it falls short of the legal standards recognised under German law. Most have described it as a show trial.

The trial was transferred from the Stuttgart Regional Court (Landgericht) to the notorious high-security Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) at Stammheim — where the RAF trials took place in the 1970s and where trials for violent crimes or terrorism charges are currently held. The activists were marched into the courtroom handcuffed and separated from their lawyers and the public by bulletproof glass. For the court, presided over by Judge Kathrin Lauchstädt, these individuals — who attempted to halt the genocide — appear to pose the same danger as the Reichsbürger, a far-right group accused of attempting to overthrow the German state by force. That latter trial is taking place in the adjoining courtroom, while several of the accused, unlike the Ulm5, are not even in pre-trial detention.

During the first 21 sessions of the Ulm5 trial, the prosecution presented its investigation and evidence. This included, amongst other things, the videos that the Ulm5 had recorded themselves and that were posted on social media; the full-length documentary “To Kill a War Machine”; hundreds of photos of the damage, particularly to the TDL laboratory (which the Ulm5 have acknowledged); an unboxing video of parcels containing red overalls; and shockingly messy police investigations consisting mainly of social media posts and selected photos found on the defendants' phones. 

At the 23rd session of the trial, on 14 October, the defence team had formally invited, and then attempted to call, their first witness. They also announced their intention to call their second witness on 16 October. Both would soon be dismissed. As Leandra’s lawyer, Mathes Breuer, explains: “The court never showed any interest in investigating the company where the events took place. They never showed any interest in investigating the genocide. And that is what we have tried to do in the court’s stead, because we believe it is important to understand why the five acted as they did and why it was also justified for them to act in that way.” 

The activists’ defence team and the activists themselves have always maintained that they acted in an emergency, in an act of defence of a third party – in this case, Gaza and its people – and to stop the genocide. Their motives must be clarified at trial for a fair verdict.

First, on 14 October, the defence invited weapons expert Hever. He has conducted research into how the technology produced at the Ulm TDL laboratory — the section of the facility damaged by the Ulm5 — is crucial to the genocide in Gaza. The software the German factory exports is used in coordinating the Israeli army’s attacks: it enables gathering and distributing information on targeted individuals and factoring in the permitted ‘collateral damage’, amongst other things. As Hever explained at the subsequent press conference:

“[T]he way in which this genocide is unfolding in Gaza is unprecedented, as it involves the industrial and exponential generation of aggregated data to create targets faster than any human being could do… Many [Israeli] soldiers have come forward in recent days and provided additional testimonies which I have included in my report to the court. These testimonies reveal how many civilians may be killed without authorisation for each of these targets, which are, in fact, generated by computers using information transmitted via radios developed in Germany by Elbit Systems Germany…”

On 16 October, Judge Kathrin Lauchstädt decided she would not hear Dr. Hever’s testimony about Elbit Systems Deutschland’s role in Israeli military operations in Gaza. She ruled that, even if his evidence were proven, it “would not alter the conviction or the statement of legal consequences.”

In her preliminary assessment, the defendants could not claim self-defence or defence of others. They had not shown that they were responding to an aggressor, or that their actions could have stopped, reduced, or delayed the violence in Gaza. The judge also argued that a company, as a legal entity, cannot itself carry out an “attack” in the relevant legal sense.

She further ruled that supplying weapons does not constitute an imminent or ongoing attack, even if those weapons are later used offensively. In a manner typical of German institutions today, the judge downplayed the violence in what she calls the ‘conflict in Gaza’, denying the genocide that is now entering its fourth year. “According to current evidence, the attack does not meet the criterion of imminence,” she said. “An attack is imminent when the infringement of a legal right is about to occur, is occurring at that very moment, or is still ongoing.” 

Disrupting preparations for a possible future attack, she said, does not justify defensive action. To qualify as an act of necessity, the activists’ intervention would have needed to offer an immediate and effective way of averting or reducing a specific danger, while being the least harmful option available. Long-term or symbolic effects would not suffice.

This reasoning effectively excludes sabotage of weapons production from the defence of necessity: only an immediate intervention counts, while disrupting the supply of weapons is treated as too indirect. It also raises a central question: if conventional legal and institutional means of stopping the genocide and challenging Israel’s occupation had been exhausted, what less severe option remained?

The judge then even went on to say that politically-motivated actions aimed at putting pressure on decision-makers and institutions – such as calling for Germany to stop supplying 30 per cent of the weapons used to commit genocide in Gaza – are not appropriate for defending anyone from danger. The judge opined on the kind of protest that she considers appropriate in bourgeois society, which actions are legitimate to stop a genocide and what is appropriate within the framework of ‘civil disobedience’ — a litany of non-actions. She then pre-empted the rest of the trial, effectively stating her intention to sentence the defendants before the proceedings had reached their conclusion: “Nor is further evidence required for sentencing. Should they be convicted, the defendants’ motivation to save human lives could, based on evidence taken so far, — in particular their statements and the facts of the case — already be taken into account in mitigation”.

In Judge Lauchstädt’s view, the Ulm5’s motivation for destroying a laboratory central to the genocide in Gaza might be a mitigating factor, but she refuses to hear further evidence or testimony in support of that defence. The accused themselves state that this was their motivation and that, she insists, is sufficient for her to reach an ‘objective’ conclusion. 

As Benjamin Düsberg, Tatlow-Devally’s lawyer, said at Friday’s press conference: “That means the only… possibility the court sees is for the judge to pass judgement after the event, but preventive resistance — to halt or prevent injustice — is not an option in this case. And that is why they are doing everything in their power to prevent it, and they do not mind disregarding and undermining the most basic rights of the defence, such as the right to call witnesses. And that constitutes an attack on the rights of the defence, in other cases as well.”

On 16 October, the defence also called upon international law and human rights expert Professor Dr. Isabel Feichtner to give evidence. She was due to testify on how the conditions in Gaza fulfil the criteria to classify it as a textbook case of genocide. However, despite having had advance notice of her invitation, the prosecutor and judge refused to admit her as a witness, deeming the evidence ‘irrelevant’. Yet, as Breuer pointed out, neither the genocide, nor the production carried out at Elbit Systems Ulm, have been addressed in any part of the prosecution’s evidence. Not only that, but statements from police witnesses have evidenced that Attorney General Stengel gave orders not to investigate Elbit Systems from the first day of this trial.

The judge’s remarks quoted above left the public with the impression that the verdict has already been decided, that the court assumes the only acceptable form of protest is to do nothing. This is because any protest against arms manufacturers is viewed as an attack on the German state and its rule of law. And indeed it is. The German state and its elites are making a fortune as they embark on one of the largest rearmament sprees in their history. 

The trial makes clear that there are forms of political violence that are acceptable to the German state: genocide, brutal police charges against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, or keeping human rights activists locked up in solitary confinement for over a year. Then there are actions that are unacceptable, such as breaking into an arms factory seeking to end that genocide, or blocking ports from which such weapons are shipped. The violence of the oppressors is tolerated; the violence of those resisting it is not. 

In these times, when states — in collusion with arms manufacturers — see themselves as the sole masters of violence, curtailing rights worldwide to fund genocidal, endless wars in other countries, and slashing social spending at home, it is important to understand the structure of violence and how to combat it, both on the streets and within institutions. As the Belgian writer and lawyer Pierre Mertens once wrote, we must ask ourselves “whether, in a world marked by flagrant social injustice, there is not more violence in maintaining the status quo than in changing it.”  

Roser Garí Pérez is an animal and human rights activist and researcher based in Berlin.

Photo: Nadine Essmat.