“The senior public prosecutor instructed the police not to investigate Elbit Systems Germany”

Interview with “Ulm 5” lawyer Mathes Breuer In September 2025, five activists, who have now become known under the name “Ulm 5”, broke into the arms company Elbit Systems Deutschland in Ulm and destroyed facilities and potential military equipment there.

This was a protest against Elbit Systems Germany's involvement in the genocide and other war crimes in Gaza.

Interview with Mathes Breuer, lawyer for the defendant Leandra Rollo.

By David Meyn Hello Mathes.

You are part of the criminal defense team in a trial against political activists, which is also being referred to in the press as the trial against “Palestine Action Germany” and is currently being heard in Stuttgart.

Most of us are probably more familiar with it as the “Ulm 5” process.

Can you briefly explain to us what this process is about?

Hello!

So, in September 2025, the five activists, who have now become known as the “Ulm 5”, broke into the arms company Elbit Systems Deutschland in Ulm and destroyed facilities and potential military equipment there.

This was a protest against Elbit Systems Germany's involvement in the genocide and other war crimes in Gaza.

The public prosecutor's office therefore believes that the trial is about trespassing, damage to property and the alleged formation of a criminal organization.

We are not commenting on whether there is a “Palestine Action Germany” structure at all and whether our clients are members of it and the public prosecutor’s office has hardly presented anything on this so far.

For us, however, the question is: Do we have to accept it when German companies are involved in war crimes?

Can we then stand by the people who are victims of these crimes and try to end this involvement?

Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, we have been told that we must do everything against Putin because he is breaking international law.

Now Israel is breaking international law in many ways - according to the majority opinion of international law experts, including those in the imperialist centers.

But the reaction is the opposite.

The contradiction between German imperialism's claim to power, its impossibility to enforce it purely economically and the lip service it pays to international law is becoming increasingly sharper.

We therefore want to turn the trial against our clients into a trial against Elbit Systems Germany and Germany's role in the genocide in order to make it clear who actually belongs in the dock here.

The quality of political prosecution of leftists in Germany has visibly increased.

In recent years, the proceedings have become more and more elaborate and the burden of proof and the level of punishment are becoming increasingly different.

In many cases, circumstantial trials (court proceedings in which there are no direct witnesses and no confession) are now sufficient.

Red.) to lock up active people for several years.

If you have followed the trial against the five activists for a while, you get the impression that these contradictions in the bourgeois justice system are escalating to an almost absurd level.

As you said, the public prosecutor's office refers in particular to the offense of property damage.

But the images of the trial, in which some of the defendants sit in glass boxes, do not at all correspond to this accusation of damage to property.

And politically, the contradictions in this negotiation also seem to be coming to a head.

Or do you see it differently?

The effort made in this process to portray the five as dangerous is certainly absurd.

The glass cage in which they are kept during the trial, the courthouse behind barbed wire, the defendants presented in chains - nothing fits with the fact that all 5 have no previous convictions and were careful not to hurt anyone during the action.

At the same time, the presiding judge is trying to depoliticize this process.

While the public prosecutor's office still spoke of anti-Semitism with a truly absurd justification, the court's evidence program is currently deliberately apolitical: who was where, when, who ordered which equipment, and who entered the building through which window and when.

The motives of the defendants, the company's connection to the genocide in Gaza - none of this has played a major role for the court so far.

To do this, of course, the court must omit many things that are otherwise completely self-evident in criminal proceedings.

If, for example, a defendant says that he wanted to protect a third party from harm through the crime, then in every criminal case the police would investigate in this direction and see whether there is any truth to this claim.

Not here.

The senior public prosecutor explicitly instructed the police not to investigate Elbit Systems Germany and the court has not yet taken any action in this direction.

It will be interesting to see how the court will answer our requests for evidence in this direction.

Your explanations are followed by another question for me: the German radical left has been very strongly influenced by an activist aspect in recent years.

Not only in actions such as civil disobedience, but also with a tendency to fight in the streets, as is often said.

What is your assessment: To what extent can this concept of left-wing activism remain a perspective in the coming years or to what extent do we have to assume that the successes of political activism at the limits of civil legality will no longer be in proportion to the repression to be expected?

I don't think I'm the right person to decide which forms of action people choose and to what extent repression is related.

It is clear that repression is increasing at all levels.

That's the other side of armament - if a state takes tougher action against external enemies, it also regularly acts against internal enemies.

However, the state does not stop at “illegal” behavior.

Even completely legal things, such as calling a genocide a genocide, can threaten economic existence in Germany, for example because you will then simply no longer be considered in the next round of state funding.

A protest movement that wants to hold its ground needs suitable structures.

An important component of this is Red Aid.

Maybe this is a friendly reminder to become a member there.

But that probably won't be enough.

But I am confident that a protest movement will find ways to do this.

There are numerous movements that fight under similar or worse conditions and are still there.

You mentioned that the German state no longer even bothers to maintain the appearance that its courts are places of political neutrality.

In a certain sense, this openness of the state represents a new role for the state in the public sphere.

But it seems to me that this isn't really taken up by the left or do you see it differently?

When I listen to your answers and also look at your practice regarding the trial, I notice that you do not limit yourself to your role as a criminal defense lawyer in the courtroom, but are also very active in the media.

As someone who is confronted with the role of the state on a daily basis in his position as a left-wing lawyer, do you have an opinion on the question of whether and to what extent the “political stage”, as the bourgeois media likes to say, should now also represent a battlefield for the Revolutionary Left?

I always think that wherever there are contradictions in government, it is worthwhile for a political movement to go in and work them out clearly.

For example, the hypocrisy with which the German state upholds international law on the one hand and regularly tramples on it itself and with its allies on the other.

Or the claim of a neutral judiciary, which is always obviously not neutral.

I try to contribute to this in a modest way so that people may correct their assumptions about this state and its judiciary.

This also helps you find your way in court if you ever need to.

Thank you for the conversation!

Would you like to tell the readers something specific?

Don't despair before the world, but consider where there are opportunities to do something about it.

I also give it to myself.

Finally, of course, the question is, how can we best support you?

The five of them are particularly happy to receive letters and visitors at the next meetings.

It continues on August 14th. in Stuttgart-Stammheim.

Photo: Ignacio Rosaslanda The post “The chief public prosecutor instructed the police not to investigate Elbit Systems Germany” appeared first on Lower Class Magazine.