Ulm Five Palestine activists face ‘show trial’ in Germany

Free the Ulm Five (Pic: @KeremSchamberg on X)

The Ulm Five are imprisoned by the German state and facing years in jail after allegedly taking part in an action against an Elbit Systems factory in the city of Ulm, Germany.

They’re charged with membership of a criminal organisation, property damage and with saying “from the river to the sea”—a criminal offence in Germany.

Seven members of the Irish parliament, senate and the European Parliament are in Stuttgart to show solidarity with the prisoners and to observe their ongoing trial, which is taking place in a high-security court at Stammheim Prison.

The Five have faced harsh treatment. In court they are banned from taking notes or having pens and are kept separate from their defence lawyers. The case also won’t be recorded or transcribed—something that will stall their ability to appeal whatever sentence they get. Even the Irish delegation were not allowed to take in pens.

They haven’t been allowed bail and have been kept in jail cells for up to 23 hours a day, with visitation limited to one hour a month.

German judges have attempted to use the British Palestine Action ban against the Ulm Five, even though Palestine Action is not proscribed in Germany.

One of the Five, Daniel Tatlow-Devally, is an Irish citizen.

Richard Boyd Barrett, a TD for the left wing People Before Profit party and part of the delegation from Ireland, said, “It was a show trial. There’s no other way to describe it.

“Everything suggests that the presumption of innocence has been thrown out the window, even though that’s a basic right under the European Convention on Human Rights,” he told Socialist Worker. 

“They were doing what governments should be doing, which is stopping the flow of weapons and arms from a European country to Israel to commit the most horrendous crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing and mass murder.

“It is a legal obligation of every state under the Genocide Convention to do everything in their power to deter a genocide being committed. Every country in Europe has signed that convention, and yet they continue to allow weapons from Elbit Systems and other arms companies to flow freely to Israel.”

At a press conference outside the trial, he added, “A contrast that seems stark to us is that, while there are glass partitions stopping the defendants from communicating with their defence, in a court in the same building there are people associated with active fascist movements.

“They are being charged with the use of guns and attempted murder and represent a serious threat to life and human beings. There none of these conditions apply. They’re allowed to sit with their lawyers.

“We plan to go back to Ireland and tell our government to speak up and stand with the Ulm Five and send observers to witness and put pressure on the German legal system to ensure a fair trial and to let them out on bail. And really they should be released and all charges should be dropped.”

Richard told Socialist Worker, “I have asked several times in the Irish parliament that the government would send official observers. They’ve done it in other cases, including for Ibrahim Halawa who was on trial in Egypt. But they have refused to date to send observers to the Ulm Five trial and it seems as if they don’t want to embarrass their EU counterparts.”

He said, “It is the people who are committing genocide in the Israeli regime and the companies providing the Israeli regime with the means to carry out this genocide who should be facing trial—not people who acted to try and stop the genocide.”