Irish politicians to attend trial of Daniel Tatlow-Devally over damage charge of Israeli arms factory

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett and Sinn Féin TD Mairéad Farrell will visit Dubliner Daniel Tatlow-Devally in Ulm prison, ahead of a trial over damage caused to a factory in Germany manufacturing weapons for the Israel Defence Forces.

As well as Boyd Barrett and Farrell, the other politicians attending the trial later this week are Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan, Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger TD, Labour Party TD Duncan Smith, Social Democrats Senator Patricia Stephenson, and Fine Gael TD Barry Ward.

The Ulm 5, a group of pro-Palestine activists which includes 32-year-old Tatlow-Devally, are on trial in Stuttgart with the charge of a break-in at an Elbit Systems facility that manufactures military equipment in the southwest of Germany in September 2025.

Elbit Systems Germany is a 100% owned subsidiary of Elbit Israel, responsible for over 80% of the weapons used in Gaza.

Videos posted online by the protesters showed them destroying equipment and devices, spray painting slogans and chanting "Free Palestine."

The Genocide Convention, a UN human rights treaty of which Germany is a party of, obligates member states to enforce the prohibition of genocide. The protesters argued that Germany was in breach of this by enabling weapons to go to Israel.

German prosecutors accused the Ulm 5 of causing around €1 million worth of damages. They are being tried under Section 129 of the German Criminal Code, which deems Palestine Action Germany, a group they are linked to, a "criminal organisation."

"I acted with the intention of publicly exposing the scandalous fact that the German government – along with arms manufacturers based in Germany – are actively supporting and profiting from the war against Gaza," Tatlow-Devally said in a June testimony.

"Since then, I have been held in pre-trial detention in Ulm. It is a deeply unsettling experience. I have grown accustomed to the sound of a cell door locking shut and closing me off from the world. I have only seen the sky for an hour a day – if at all...When I saw in the indictment that the prosecutor had sought to portray us as antisemitic, in line with a tired and fallacious argument common in the German public sphere, I wasn’t surprised, though I was of course outraged. It is disgraceful to characterise resistance against occupation and mass murder as antisemitism."

Daniel Tatlow-Devally

Families of the protesters raised concern over the conditions of the prisoners including food shortages, no recordings of the trials being kept and that the Irish Government had not sent an observer despite requests.

"It is outrageous that the Ulm 5 are being held in inhumane conditions, and tried under laws and in a manner normally reserved for terrorists and organised criminals," Boyd Barrett said ahead of the visit to the prison today.

"They were protesting against a company in Germany producing weapons used by Israel to prosecute what the Irish government itself has said is a genocidal and illegal campaign against Gaza and the Palestinian people. They did not hide that they engaged in an act of civil disobedience. They were no threat to anyone at any point in their action against Elbit Systems."