Elbit Germany sending target acquisition system to Israel as Ulm Five face 'show trial'

With activists – including an Irish citizen – facing a “show trial” in Germany, The Ditch can reveal the weapons factory they’re accused of vandalising is today sending a laser system for marking human targets to Tel Aviv.

It’s one of at least eight military goods shipments Elbit Systems Deutschland have sent this year from Ulm to its factories in Israel, which supply Israeli land forces with most of the weapons used to commit genocide in Gaza.

The laser target acquisition system was transported yesterday by road to Belgium and was scheduled to be loaded onto an El Al flight from Liège to Tel Aviv today for delivery to Elbit Systems in Rehovot.

The Ulm Five – among them Dubliner Daniel Tatlow-Devally who has been detained for eight months – face up to five years’ imprisonment on charges of criminal damage, trespass and membership of a criminal organisation. The charges relate to an alleged action carried out on Elbit’s Ulm factory. 

The Ditch first reported in December last year that Elbit sent target acquisition systems from Germany to Israel both before and after Palestine Action targeted its Ulm plant in September 2025.

The trial resumed yesterday in Stammheim, a maximum-security court complex used for the Red Army Faction trials of the 1970s.

A statement released today on behalf of the Ulm Five described the proceedings as a “show trial”.

“The State Security Chamber did not shift its position on the second day of the trial and continues to reject basic constitutional standards. As defence lawyers we will not stoop to being party to the sham legitimation of a show trial,” said Benjamin Düsberg, defence counsel for Daniel Tatlow-Devally.

Lawyers for the Ulm Five have called on German authorities to investigate Elbit Systems Deutschland for complicity in Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.