In the early hours of September 8, 2025, in Ulm, Germany, five activists gained access to a branch of a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private defense contractor. They damaged office equipment while filming themselves. According to their own statements, they wanted to protest Germany’s arms exports to Israel and put a stop to them. None of them had a criminal record; all of them waited at the scene for the police to arrive.

Since then, the Stuttgart prosecutor’s office has charged the five with property damage, now estimated at over €1 million. It is casting them as members of “Palestine Action Germany,” said to be a criminal organization under Section 129 — a statute usually reserved for terrorist and organized crime groups. It also argues that the raid had “antisemitic” motives — an accusation that the defendants strongly deny.

The five defendants, who hold Irish, British, Spanish, and German citizenship, have been held in high-security detention, much of it in isolation, ever since. The trial, which began in April but is expected to last into next year, is widely considered a landmark case for Palestine solidarity in Germany.