My son Daniel’s 23-hour lock-up in solitary confinement has lasted a year now.
A cell 5 x 2 metres, a frosted glass window that barely opens a crack. Just two half-hour visits a month. All post surveilled, no phone calls allowed. This will continue until the trial ends – likely in January 2027. The trial has been described as a ‘show trial’ by the 11 defence counsel and 10 Irish and German politicians who have attended so far: TDs, senators, Bundestag MPs and MEPs.
The ‘Ulm5’ – including my son Daniel Tatlow-Devally, an Irish citizen – are undergoing this nine-month-long ordeal at Stuttgart-Stammheim for a direct action at Israeli-owned arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in Ulm, southwest Germany.
The five aimed to prevent genocide. They are not accused of harming or threatening anyone. They filmed their action and waited for the police to arrest them. They have no previous convictions. Yet the prosecutor has elected to charge them not only with trespass and property damage, which they do not contest, but also with membership of a criminal organisation – the notorious ‘Section 129’ of the German Criminal Code typically used against political protest.
For saying ‘from the river to the sea’, the five are also charged with using ‘symbols of an unconstitutional or terrorist organisation’ – a controversial charge, frequently used against pro-Palestine protesters in Germany, which multiple German courts have declined to convict on, given its unclear provenance and chilling effect on freedom of opinion.
The Ulm5 are held in a bullet-proof glass cage during proceedings, yet in Germany defendants normally sit at a desk with their lawyers, even when on much more serious charges than the Ulm5 face. Amplifying the stigmatising effect, the five are handcuffed and marched into their enclosure gripped by court security kitted out with stab vests, padded gear, reinforced gloves, pepper spray canisters and extendible batons. The judge has not made the required individualised risk assessment for this arrangement. All of this contravenes European Court of Human Rights rulings on fair trial rights and the presumption of innocence.
Show trial
Friedrich Merz, Germany’s Chancellor, declared it “Not a show trial” when he visited Dublin in July, assuring us all that everything is just fine with German justice. Irish politicians disagree: a few days earlier, a cross-party delegation of seven visited Daniel in prison and attended the trial. They were TDs Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP-Solidarity), who organised the visit, with Ruth Coppinger (PBP-Solidarity), Mairéad Farrell (SF), Duncan Smith (Labour), Barry Ward (FG), Senator Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats) and MEP Lynn Boylan (SF). Mairéad Farrell speaks fluent German; Barry Ward is a senior criminal barrister at the Irish bar and counsel at the International Criminal Court.
The seven politicians went to Germany because they were concerned at what they had heard. They came back deeply shocked, even shaken at what they had seen.
The court forbade them from discussing the case with Daniel in prison. It also refused to allow them to take notes during trial proceedings. At their Dublin press conference they described “outrageous” conditions (Richard Boyd Barrett). “I was shook coming out of that prison” – “I went there worried and I left a lot more worried” (Mairéad Farrell). “The heaviest-handed response I’ve ever seen” – “as if they’re accused of war crimes” (Duncan Smith). “Deeply concerned at the level of translation” (Mairéad Farrell). “Far short of the minimum standards we expect for fair trials” – “there isn’t a transcript” – “no consistency” from the judge – “I would have very serious concerns about the fair trial nature of what's going on, and I come to this as a lawyer with 20 years’ experience” (Barry Ward).
How did we get here?
The Ulm5 – Daniel, Vi, Crow, Zo and Leandra; Irish, German, UK and Spanish/Argentinian citizens living in Berlin – broke into and caused property damage at the German subsidiary of an Israeli arms manufacturer that makes 85% of the land-based equipment procured by the Israeli military. Defence submissions in court evidenced that the Ulm factory researches and develops communications, including AI-driven targeting, for the entire Elbit ecosystem, allowing Israeli forces to lock on to 850,000 targets in Gaza and Lebanon so far. These comms systems, central to contemporary warfare, are being sold across Europe as “battle-tested”.
In Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 20,179 children and maimed 44,143 more. Uncounted children are buried under rubble or in unmarked graves. Yet Germany – locked in a deathly embrace with Israel, supporting it no matter what – chooses to reject the ‘overwhelming’ evidence for genocide in Gaza.
On this basis, the German State is treating the Ulm5 not as human rights defenders, but as a state security risk. It appears they have committed the cardinal sin of offending Germany’s Staatsräson, its current raison d’état. This often-invoked political (not legal) dictum holds that, to atone for the Holocaust, Germany must stand by Israel unquestioningly. The bleak irony that now Germany is arming Israel’s genocide – Germany is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel, after the US, with export approvals rising tenfold after October 2023 – appears lost on the German authorities.
Almost immediately after the five activists were arrested on site at Elbit on 8th September 2025, the case was categorised as state security and sent up to the state prosecutor in Stuttgart. “Better check the synagogue”, we heard police say on their bodycams when a recording of the arrest was shown in court – reflecting the widespread and false conflation in Germany of anything Israeli with all Jews. Doing so is itself antisemitic – something that critical Jewish commentators point out to no avail. Irony upon irony. The prosecution’s case against the Ulm5 makes this same error, believing their motivation in attacking an Israeli-owned firm must be antisemitic, something that Daniel has roundly rejected in court with heartfelt mention of their Jewish stepfather and extended family.
In court, Bastian Gropp, the police case lead, testified to multiple meetings with prosecutor Ronny Stengel, who directed him not to investigate the defendants’ motivation in targeting Elbit Systems – although the five had explicitly stated their goal was to end genocide and Elbit Systems’ complicity. As the duty of the prosecutor in Germany is to investigate exonerating as well as incriminating evidence, this police testimony was shocking and led the defence to submit an unusual application: for the court to dismiss the prosecutor for neglecting his duties.
Still worse, when the defence introduced evidence for genocide in Gaza, prosecutor Stengel laughed on more than one occasion. This may seem barely credible, yet is a fact.
Meanwhile the presiding judge, Kathrin Lauchstädt (it is a judge-only trial with three judges and two lay assessors), declared herself to be a sergeant-major in charge of a barracks parade ground. This surreal moment came during a testy exchange with defence lawyer Matthias Schuster after the judge had shouted at the public gallery: “Quiet down there!”. It resulted in one of many motions from the defence for the judge to recuse herself for bias. Although we all heard the exchange twice – the second time when the judge reluctantly dictated it into the court record at the defence’s insistence – she later reported it differently to her chamber, with the support of prosecutor Stengel.
We expect many more defence motions for the judge to recuse herself as the case drags on. But the likelihood of their success seems small, as the decision lies with the judge’s own colleagues in her chamber, who reject these motions every time.
Impossible claims by the Irish government
Support in Ireland from the wider community and from TDs, senators and MEPs is powerful and heartening for Daniel and us all. In contrast, our government seems intransigent, determined to avoid upholding the human rights of a citizen in the court of a powerful EU Member State. Ministers make claims in letters to our family, to TDs, in the media, and even in the Dáil, that either answer questions we didn’t ask or that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Minister McEntee claims to have oversight (“direct” or “daily”) of the trial, yet she must know that this is impossible. Without an observer, no oversight can be had – as there are no court transcripts or recordings that could be referred to, and almost no media coverage. Who then provides these updates? We have repeatedly requested that the government send an observer to the trial. They repeatedly respond that ‘intervening’ would breach the Vienna Convention. But observing a trial is not intervening.
Time and again we see a government plamásing its people about Palestine while failing to draw the realpolitik consequences. The Occupied Territories Bill generated a fudge that even the Minister herself conceded would not comply with international law. Visas for students from Gaza are not being granted. Will the matches against Israel in September and October go ahead? It seems only Eurovision met the bar for being insignificant enough to let go.
So what will the Irish government decide about the Ulm5 trial? The court in Stammheim has demonised the defendants and breached their human rights from day one, so appeals will certainly follow; indeed, applications to higher courts and the German Federal Constitutional Court are already underway. Without a transcript, and without observers, this will be notably more challenging. Can this really be something the government is happy to accept? We hope that Minister McEntee will agree that the human rights of a citizen need supporting in this important, historic case about genocide – by observing (not interfering in) the trial.
We will not be silent
Meanwhile, Daniel remains in solitary, in Ulm’s historic town-centre prison. On the prison wall outside is a plaque dedicated to the ‘White Rose’ anti-Nazi resistance group, whose members Sophie and Hans Scholl grew up in Ulm, and whose parents and sisters were held inside.
Sophie and Hans were executed in 1943 for making and distributing six leaflets against the Nazi regime and the ongoing war. Their second leaflet railed against the ‘bestial’ murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland; the third called for sabotage of arms factories. Although the Ulm5’s fate will, thankfully, not be comparable, still one can’t escape yet another irony: today, the Scholls and the White Rose are celebrated throughout Ulm. There’s a veritable flourishing of memorialisation in schools, museums, churches, their former house, a town square and rose gardens on the banks of the Danube (with a white rose, of course), all dedicated to their names. And yes, even on the wall of the prison within which Daniel is incarcerated – for damaging an arms factory, and seeking to prevent a genocide.
The plaque on the prison wall quotes a warning from the fourth White Rose leaflet. For those with ears open to hear, it echoes today:
We will not be silent,
We are your guilty conscience,
The White Rose will not leave you in peace!
Mimi Tatlow-Golden is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies of Childhood and Youth at the Open University. Daniel Tatlow-Devally is her son.