Cuffs and cages for ‘Ulm 5’ pro-Palestinian activists, as Germany sells tanks to Israel

Pro-Palestinian activists are facing years in prison after staging a protest last September at Elbit Systems Germany, an Israeli defence firm in the town of Ulm.

The five activists, accused by the prosecutor of being members of members of Palestine Action Germany, have been paraded in front of German media in handcuffs, held in glass cages during court proceedings, and confined in solitary confinement at separate prisons for up to 23 hours a day.

Although charged with belonging to a criminal organisation and causing around €1m of damage at the Israeli company, the five have yet to be found guilty of any wrongdoing.

Known as the Ulm 5, they come from the UK, Spain, Ireland, and Germany. Their names are: Daniel Tatlow-Devally, Zo Hailu, Crow Tricks, Vi Kovarbasic and Leandra Rollo.

Their incarceration, labelled as pre-trial detention, has also cast a spotlight on Germany’s court proceedings, presumption of innocence, and the country’s pro-Israel politics.

The trial, which has been extended to January 2027, is being held at a high-security court at Stammheim prison, where defendants are marched handcuffed and held behind bullet-proof glass cages.

“The amount of time these five will have spent in pretrial detention will be 16 months,” said Mimi Tatlow-Golden, whose 32-year-old son Daniel was among the five.

Although the indictment was not public, Tatlow-Golden said it included allegations of antisemitism.

Speaking to EUobserver on Tuesday (9 June), she also said her husband’s wider family were all Jewish.

“When I saw in the indictment that the prosecutor had sought to portray us as antisemitic in line with the tired and fallacious argument common in the German public sphere, I wasn’t surprised, though, of course, I was outraged,” she said, reading from a court statement made by her son.

“It was heartening, poignant, and amusing to compare this rhetoric with the warm solidarity expressed towards myself by my many Jewish family members,” she added.