Sabotage at Elbit | Trial against “Ulm 5”: Court restricts publicity

The trial against the five activists in Stuttgart-Stammheim is regularly accompanied by protests. Photo: dpa/Enrique Kaczor Five members of the Bundestag from the Die Linke party wanted to follow the 28th day of the trial in the trial against the so-called “Ulm 5” as parliamentary observers on Friday. But the presiding judge Kathrin Lauchstädt rejected her request to be allowed to take notes during the hearing. Several applications from the defense and the hearing of an expert also caused conflicts in the Stuttgart-Stammheim regional court that day.

The MPs Nicole Gohlke, Lea Reisner, Violetta Bock, Lizzy Schubert and Aaron Valent wanted to document the negotiation with pen and paper. After a short period of reflection, the judge justified the rejection by saying that the MPs could not enjoy any special status compared to the rest of the audience. The court had previously rejected the defense's usual requests: the defendants should be allowed to sit next to their lawyers in the courtroom, the defense should have one person available to take minutes, and they should be able to meet their clients in a courtroom without a separating security screen. Pens for the audience to take notes were also not permitted.

Mathes Breuer, lawyer for Leandra Rollo, criticized the decision to the "nd": "It is absurd that the court forbids members of the Bundestag from taking notes with paper and pen, and the danger claims that members of the Bundestag could attack judicial officials with pens." Without the possibility of taking notes during negotiations lasting several hours, there is no effective publicity, said the lawyer. »And that seems to be exactly the aim of the chairwoman: to hinder public scrutiny of her negotiations. This is disrespect for the Bundestag and dishonest.”

The further question was again whether the Israeli arms expert Shir Hever should be heard as an expert. The defense had already summoned him on October 14th. Hever has been involved with the Israeli defense industry for 17 years. In the opinion of the defense, his report should prove what role the software-defined radio technology developed in the Ulm branch of Elbit Systems plays in military operations in Gaza. Lawyer Benjamin Düsberg explained to the “nd”: “The report from Dr. Hever will show that the software-defined radio technology, which is manufactured in the Elbit Systems Germany branch in Ulm, represents a necessary link in the AI-potentiated mass murder of the Palestinian population of Gaza.

The defense argues that the damage to the laboratory was justified by emergency aid. To support this argument, she also wanted to hear from other experts. The international law expert Professor Isabel Feichtner from the University of Würzburg was therefore invited on October 16th. On October 28th, Dimitra Andritsou was due to present a report prepared by the research agency Forensis Architecture on the flow of arms between Germany and Israel in the years 2023 to 2025. However, the chamber has not yet admitted their report as evidence. It was not relevant to the proceedings, they said.

The defense called for Hever to be heard again on Friday. After a two-hour break, during which the members of the Bundestag present held a press conference together with lawyer Nina Òner, the Attorney General read out his statement against the admission of the expert. He doubted its neutrality and referred, among other things, to Hever's statements at a press conference on October 14th. There he explained that the employees of Elbit Systems also bore responsibility for their work.

After Nina Òner, Hanna Hailu's lawyer, again requested that Isabel Feichtner be heard as a witness, the judge ended the hearing. There was also no decision on whether Dimitra Andritsou should be heard.

The defense was frustrated. Mathes Breuer explained that the court and the public prosecutor's office had once again shown that they were not interested in a comprehensive clarification of the facts. The defense has now summoned three experts themselves and brought them to the hearing. The court delayed the decisions and ultimately rejected the applications. "The chamber would like to prevent at all costs that Elbit Systems' responsibility for the situation in Gaza is discussed in the hearing - even though that was exactly the defendant's motivation and without this one cannot legally assess their actions."

The five activists broke into the Ulm headquarters of the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems on September 8, 2025 and in particular damaged material from the TDL laboratory (Tactical Data Links). In videos published later, they explained that they wanted to stop the genocide in Gaza and expose the German state's complicity. They then waited without resistance to be arrested. Since then they have been in custody, spread across five different prisons. They are accused, among other things, of burglary, damage to property and membership in a criminal organization. The process began at the end of April 2026.

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