Irish citizen to go on trial in Germany over alleged break-in at Israeli arms firm

AN IRISH CITIZEN is due to go on trial today for their alleged role in a break-in at a German subsidiary of an Israeli arms firm.

Daniel Tatlow-Devally is one of five young Berlin-based activists who have been charged with trespass and property damage at Elbit Systems Deutschland in the southwestern city of Ulm.

The five, who were arrested at the factory on 8 September 2025, are also charged with membership of a criminal organisation under Section 129 of the German Criminal Code.

Tatlow-Devally, from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in Dublin, and the Spanish, German and UK nationals have been held in pre-trial detention in five separate prisons for over seven months since their arrests. None of the five have prior convictions.

The family of the Dubliner said they have been held on 23-hour solitary confinement for over seven months, with 30-minute family visits permitted every fortnight.

The family said this treatment raises “serious concerns over fair-trial rights, the treatment of human rights protest, and Germany’s wider backsliding on human rights protections”. 

Defence lawyers for the five activists say they are human rights defenders “whose aim was to prevent further acts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Gaza”.

They said they are being made an example of through disproportionate, punitive detention.

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Irish Lawyers for Palestine have also made a submission to UN human rights experts, raising concern about the activists’ criminalisation and prolonged pre-trial detention, the conditions in which they have been held and the use of Section 129 against anti-genocide protest.

Tatlow-Devally’s father Conor said he has “great concerns” about the atmosphere surrounding the trial.

“The treatment of my son Daniel, by shackling hand and foot, detention under conditions reserved for organised crime or terrorism, positioning behind full glass screens, together with judicial pronouncements made in denying bail, suggest that the German authorities are portraying the accused in a political fashion, disproportionate to their actions and one that conveys prejudgement of their fate.”

Tatlow-Devally’s lawyer, Benjamin Düsberg, has taken issue with the venue for the trial.

The Stuttgart Regional Court is sitting at Stuttgart-Stammheim correctional facility. A maximum security courtroom was built inside theprison in the 1970s for the trials of the leaders of the Red Army Faction, a far-left militant group. 

Düsberg said staging the trial here “amounts to a prejudgement of the defendants and gives little confidence that there will be a fair, rule-of-law process”.

“Furthermore, the prosecution has persistently failed to ask the key question: the role of Elbit Systems Deutschland in the genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

“We formally requested that they investigate this, but they ignored our application and have not deemed it necessary to question a single person at Elbit Systems Deutschland on the matter. We will show in court that this was an act of civil disobedience directed exclusively at property, in order to prevent further war crimes.”

The trial opens today and is scheduled across 16 dates between 27 April to 29 July.

A demonstration is taking place outside the German Embassy in Booterstown, Dublin at 1pm this afternoon to show solidarity with Tatlow-Devally and the other four activists.

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