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Defense team for the ‘Ulm 5’ demands immediate release from pre-trial detention

Germany continues to repress Palestine solidarity, using pre-trial detention to silence dissent

Roser Gari Perez
30/01/2026

Editor’s Note: On 12th December 2025, The Left Berlin published a report by Roser Garí Pérez about the harsh pre-trial conditions of the Ulm 5, facing trial for a non-violent action against arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, which is complicit in genocide in Gaza. On 26th January, the Ulm 5 filed an appeal. Here we publish a statement by their lawyers, preceded by a summary by Roser of their current condition.

The pro-Palestine movement in Germany has been brutally repressed and persecuted for decades, but since October 2023 the state’s physical, psychological, and legal violence has intensified.

Invoking Germany’s Staatsräson—the unwavering defense of Israel, a state currently on trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for committing a textbook genocide in Gaza—German police have arrested thousands of people, with hundreds of cases now moving through criminal courts across the country. In Berlin alone, police claim to have initiated more than 11,000 proceedings.

People prosecuted for minor offenses such as trespassing, chants, or symbols are treated as dangerous criminals, with cases often heard in high-security courtrooms.

While state violence is largely ignored, or even encouraged, by the political elite and significant parts of the population, activists opposing its most extreme expression—Germany’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people—are criminalized and dragged through lengthy, exhausting legal procedures. Few cases illustrate this political persecution more clearly than that of the Ulm 5.

Further restrictions

Despite the nonviolent and highly targeted nature of their action—which posed no threat to public safety—the German state appears determined to make an example of the Ulm 5 and has denied them bail.

Since their incarceration, they have been subjected to disproportionately harsh treatment. Beyond the abuses documented in my previous report, the Ulm 5 have faced severe restrictions on communication and contact, as well as inhumane detention conditions, including the following:

One individual is completely denied phone contact with lawyers, family, or friends.
Others are permitted phone calls only with legal counsel, with all communication with family and friends prohibited.
In-person visits are severely restricted: one person is allowed two one-hour visits per month, while another is permitted only one hour per month, divided into two 30-minute sessions.
Video visits are rendered largely ineffective due to poor internet quality, reducing a scheduled one-hour visit to as little as 20 minutes. Some visits take place behind floor-to-ceiling glass, with all physical contact prohibited.
All visits by family and friends are monitored by police and a translator.
There is a systemic failure to properly communicate visit and phone-call arrangements to both prisoners and their families, resulting in missed connections and significant distress.
Incoming mail is poorly photocopied, often rendering letters difficult or impossible to read.
One individual was initially placed in a shared cell they felt was unsafe and was later moved.
In another case, an incident occurred in a nearby prison corridor in which a person took their own life.
Prisoners report inadequate food, with individuals stating they often feel hungry.
Heating and clothing provisions are insufficient; warm clothing sent by families arrives extremely slowly or is turned away entirely.
During holiday periods, individuals were at times confined to their cells for entire days due to staff shortages.

They also suffer arbitrary restrictions on personal items and information:

One individual has been restricted to ordering only three books in the four and a half months since their arrest, with no books permitted to be sent from outside.
Access to newspapers and general information about the prison system is withheld, while explanations provided by staff are often sarcastic or unhelpful.
Individuals are prohibited from discussing their case with family members during visits, including relaying updates from their lawyer.
All visits are surveilled by police representatives and a translator.
All written correspondence is monitored by the prosecutor or presiding judge.

The activists also face inadequate access to legal counsel and basic procedural rights. Phone calls and meetings with their lawyers—legally unrestricted—have been repeatedly cut short by prison staff, in apparent violation of the law.

Some individuals report being denied adequate healthcare despite having potentially serious medical conditions.

The trial dates currently offered by the court span nearly three months, from late April to late July. As a result, pre-trial detention may extend to as long as 11 months, exceeding the standard six-month maximum without adequate justification. The court has scheduled hearings non-consecutively over several months, creating significant logistical and financial barriers for lawyers, families, and supporters attempting to attend.

The disproportionately punitive treatment these activists are facing appears designed to punish and isolate them before their trial has even begun—while also serving as a warning to others in Germany who might consider challenging the state’s Staatsräson.

By preemptively punishing those who seek to uphold international law and prevent genocide, Germany adds yet another chapter to its complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Press release: 26 January 2026

Dear Sir or Madam,

We, the defence lawyers for the ‘Ulm 5’, have today lodged an appeal against their detention. Our clients must be released from pre-trial detention immediately.

The clients have now been in pre-trial detention for almost five months without interruption. The stricter conditions continue to apply. This includes strict control of telephone calls, visits and letters, confinement to their cells for up to 23 hours a day, and restricted access to books and communal events.

The enforcement of pre-trial detention was disproportionate from the outset. The act was clearly aimed at a legitimate goal, namely, to end the killing of civilians in Gaza. Only material damage was caused in this context; no people were injured. Elbit Systems Deutschland GmbH & Co KG is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. The latter profits considerably from the war in Gaza and supplies a large proportion of the drones used there. However, no investigation was conducted into this line of defence based on justifiable emergency assistance, and a corresponding request by the defence was ignored by the Attorney General’s Office. The investigating authorities are obviously primarily concerned with making an example of our clients, who are committed to fighting occupation and genocide.

On top of that, now that charges have been brought, the Stuttgart Regional Court is violating the principle of expeditious proceedings, which must be given special consideration in detention cases (Art. 5(3) sentence 2 ECHR; Sections/§§ 121, 122 StPO). The main hearing is not scheduled to begin until the end of April 2026 and is expected to last until at least the end of July. The Regional Court is legally required to begin the trial by the beginning of March 2026 at the latest. The unlawful detention of our clients is thus being prolonged indefinitely, which constitutes a significant violation of their fundamental right to liberty.

All defence lawyers have therefore lodged an appeal against detention with the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart today.

The signatories are available to answer any questions.

Yours sincerely,

Solicitor Dr Maja Beisenherz, Munich, Info@beisenherz.eu, 0177 / 70 95 812

Solicitor Mathes Breuer, Munich, breuer@kanzlei-abe.de, 0175 / 52 46 963

Solicitor Benjamin Düsberg, Berlin, mail@rechtsanwalt-duesberg.de, 0157 / 30 30 8383

Solicitor Rosa Mayer-Eschenbach, Munich, eschenbach@kanzlei-abe.de, 0176 / 65 35 9443

Solicitor Christina Mucha, Memmingen, info@kanzlei-mucha.de, 08331 / 69 08 136

Solicitor Nina Onèr, Berlin, kanzlei@ninaoner.de, 01520 97 33 278

Solicitor Matthias Schuster, Berlin, mail@anwalt-schuster.de, 0176 / 24 75 8230

Solicitor Martina Sulzberger, Augsburg, kanzlei@anwaeltin-sulzberger.de; 0821 / 50 87 3850

(This press release was written in German. Translation: Ana Ferreira. Reproduced with permission)

Poland Not Safe

No systemic flaws”??? The aftermath of Dublin transfers to Poland

The Left Berlin
28/01/2026

The long awaited report “No systemic flaws”??? The aftermath of Dublin transfers to Poland will be launched on 29th January 2026, with participation of Polish asylum lawyers and in the presence of survivors of border violence along the Belarus-Poland-Germany flight route (the very chain of violence).

The report exposes systemic flaws in the Polish asylum system focusing on the situation of persons subjected to Dublin “transfers” (deportations) to Poland by Germany. It highlights Poland’s complete suspension of access to asylum for those arriving via Belarus, as well as the systematic and arbitrary detention of asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors of 15+ years old, families with children, pregnant women, persons with disabilities, persons in psychiatric crisis, and other vulnerable groups.

The report has been born out of the stark contrast between the grim asylum reality in Poland for especially the non-European, non-white, non-Christian, and the complete denial of this reality by the German authorities. Poland has been violating fundamental rights of asylum seekers for years, especially since the opening of Belarus-Poland-Germany route in the summer of 2021, while Germany has been playing oblivious to it.

The violence perpetrated by Polish authorities takes place not only at the external EU border with Belarus, causing death and life-long injury to brown- and black-bodied migrants, but also across the country through arbitrary and systematic detention and bureaucratic barbarity that keeps the same people out of asylum procedure thus in a legal limbo and at a direct risk of deportation to the countries they had fled.

Contrary to what had been expected by the civil societies in Poland and Germany, the change of government in Warsaw to a “liberal” one in December 2023 brought only drastic deterioration of the situation for non-European, non-white, non-Christian asylum seekers. In the atmosphere of warmongering against Russia and massive military buildup especially at its border with Belarus, Poland—as of 27th March 2025—has barred those arriving through this border from access to asylum in the name of countering “instrumentalisation.”

Germany has all the indisputable reasons not to ignore the part of Dublin III Regulation that obliges it not to transfer asylum seekers “to the Member State primarily designated as responsible [when] there are substantial grounds for believing that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions for applicants in that Member State, resulting in a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.” It chooses not to see them.

In fact, Germany’s quiet complicity in Poland’s war on migrants has turned into a full-on participation with the introduction of German pushbacks on the Oder or Zurückweisungen in October 2023. The government in Berlin has become a link in the chain of violence against the people on the move. It was best evidenced when, in July last year, Alexander Dobrindt visited Poland’s border area with Belarus to be shown by his then/at-the-time counterpart—Tomasz Simoniak—how well Poland has been fortifying this border and protecting itself, Fortress Germany and Fortress Europe from those fleeing conflicts, wars and the genocide elsewhere—“the wretched of the earth.”

The launch event—in English—takes place on 29th January 2026, 14:00-17:00, at the premises of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Straße der Pariser Kommune 8A, 10243 Berlin and online. The event contains presentations and discussion on the Suspension of access to asylum & “instrumentalisation“ and on Other systemic flaws and their impact on vulnerable groups.

Red Flag: Germany Is Already Quite Trumpian

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin looks at the similarities between Minneapolis and Berlin.

Nathaniel Flakin

The world watches with horror as ICE agents murder people on the streets of Minneapolis. Even Germany’s right-wing politicians like Jens Spahn (CDU) are “following developments with great concern,” as he told the BILD tabloid (which I won’t link).

Yet even as German liberals look down at the chaos on U.S. streets, the Federal Republic of Germany already applies many of the anti-democratic rules that Trump is trying to introduce with brutal force.

Masked Agents

In the United States, it is widely considered a scandal that agents of a law enforcement agency are wearing masks. Liberal pundits point out that this prevents any accountability—and if officers are not accountable, then there is no government by the people. The New York Times published this op-ed:

Until now, law enforcement officers in the United States rarely masked their faces… it’s just been accepted that masked policing isn’t consistent with a democratic society. We want law enforcement officers to see themselves as accountable to the community. And we want community members to see officers as approachable… Masks undermine both. They instill fear in the community and encourage a menacing aura of infallibility among officers.

Go to any demonstration in Berlin, and cops will almost always be masked—and will simultaneously attack demonstrators for wearing masks. I’ve never heard a justification, aside from a right-wing fantasy about police officers being a particularly endangered group, in spite of all evidence. As the Times pointed out, this is about instilling fear and creating a menacing aura.

The law in Germany says that citizens expressing their views in public must be accountable to police, or be subject to assault. But police are not expected to be accountable to citizens. How is this, by any definition, rule of the demos? Yet I have never seen a German liberal call for democratic norms.

Absolute Immunity

Fascist gremlin Stephen Miller has claimed, falsely, that ICE agents enjoy “absolute immunity” as they carry out their campaign of terror. In Germany, police enjoy an immunity that is near absolute—one expert called them “legally untouchable.”

If you are illegally assaulted by police in Germany, the only agency you can turn to is the police themselves. And as soon as you try to press charges, they will press charges against you, in order to justify their violence. The cops will then investigate themselves and in something like 99 percent of cases will close the investigation without any result. Then your only option is to sue the public prosecutor in an attempt to force them to press charges. If you do make it to court, judges will almost always believe the police.

So even in the most disturbing cases, like when German cops shot and almost killed a 12-year-old deaf girl two months ago, the officers will not face any consequences. Again in the Times, the conservative columnist David French criticizes the “web of immunities” that prevents citizens from suing when the federal government violates their rights—yet such discussion is mostly absent from Germany’s political scene.

This is why the far-right group Turning Point UK can gloat: “German police give a masterclass in how to deal with ANTIFA!” Germany already has the kind of lawless police violence that Trumpians dream about—and virtually no pushback in the public square.

Deportating Children

As Daniel Bax points out in the formerly left-wing newspaper taz, Germany is also in the midst of a “deportation frenzy”—the previous government of Olaf Scholz promised to “finally deport people on a large scale,” and the current government of Friedrich Merz promised still more deportations.

Before Trump, ICE agents were not allowed to wait outside courthouses to snatch people who were pursuing legal status. In Germany, however, it is absolutely normal to trick people with an appointment at the immigration office—and detain them on the spot for deportation. And while ICE thugs lurk outside schools hoping to grab parents, German police will often go into classrooms and kidnap small children.

Germany’s citizenship laws are straight out of a Trumpian fever dream: while Trump is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship, which was secured in the constitution after the defeat of the slaveocracy, the Federal Republic has never used any legal principle but the “right of blood.” This means that people who were born in Germany and have never lived anywhere else can be deported to countries they’ve never set foot in—the kind of “remigration” that Nazis aim for.

Strikes

If Spahn is indeed “concerned” about the scenes on U.S. streets, then he should introduce reforms to stop such brutal state violence from taking place here. We need full citizenship rights for everyone who lives here and basic accountability for police.

The images from Minneapolis are horrifying—but it is no less inspiring to see countless people of all backgrounds coming together to defend the entire community against state terror.

Racist campaigns, whether from Trump or from Merz, are intended to divide the working class, so that we can be more easily exploited by capitalists. Yet we can stop these racist policies ourselves. It doesn’t help to vote for parties like the Greens or Die Linke, who oppose racism in speeches but then carry out deportations once they’re in office. Instead, the strike in Minneapolis last Friday showed the enormous power of the working class to unite and shut down production. That’s how we can beat back this Trumpian assault, both in the U.S. and in Germany.

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

News from Berlin and Germany, 28th January 2026

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany

The Left Berlin

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Berlin becomes a stronghold of protest

The Education and Science Union (GEW) Berlin has called on employees of the state of Berlin, including employees in municipal daycare centres, state schools, district offices and state universities, to take part in a warning strike on January 29. This also applies to employees at the Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus, the Lette-Verein and student employees at universities. The chairman of GEW Berlin, Gökhan Akgün, criticised the conditions in Berlin’s education system. GEW’s regional chair, Felicia Kompio, also stated that Berlin would play a central role in the nationwide protest. The warning strikes are intended to increase pressure on the federal states. Source: tagesspiegel

Berlin Court of Appeal overturns acquittal for “From the river to the sea”

The Berlin Court of Appeal has overturned an acquittal by the Tiergarten District Court for the use of the pro-Palestinian slogan “From the river to the sea” and referred the case back to another division of the district court. According to the Court of Appeal, the court in Tiergarten had made several legal errors in its previous ruling. Among other things, it criticised the district court’s ruling for lacking justification and for misinterpreting the relevant criminal law provisions on the use of symbols of terrorist organisations. Source: rbb

A guide to painful holds

Berlin’s police chief Barbara Slowik Meisel has stated that “the Berlin police do not train in pain holds.” However, internal documents show the opposite: the Berlin police’s “Operational Training Manual” teaches controversial pain holds. The handbook explains to police officers how they should behave in various operational situations—and how they can inflict pain on people in a targeted manner. Frag den Staat published relevant excerpts from the textbook. Pain holds are pressure and leverage techniques that can cause extreme pain and even nerve damage. The Society for Civil Rights considers these techniques to be a serious violation of fundamental rights. Source: fragdenstaat

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Söder believes Germany should merge some federal states

At CSU’s winter meeting, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder has said Germany should merge some of its 16 federal states to make the federal system more efficient. He also said that ideally there would be fewer and larger states, and that the current federal system, in which some larger, wealthier states financially support smaller states, could not continue. “Larger entities are more successful than smaller ones,” Söder concluded. More broadly, Söder called for an end to the Berlin-Bonn Act, which was introduced during the German reunification period to move the seat of the federal government to Berlin. Source: iamexpat

Trial against the “Saxon separatists”

The trial against the ”Saxon Separatists” started on Friday in Dresden. The prosecution does not consider the name to be a coincidence, as the abbreviation “SS” is an allusion to National Socialism. According to the investigation, the “Saxon separatists” was founded in 2020 in Brandis (Saxony). Three of the defendants were still minors at the time. The group is accused of getting ready for a “Day X”, in order to eliminate the free democratic basic order in an armed struggle. For this reason, all defendants are accused of high treason. The group’s lawyer, Martin Kohlmann, also belongs to the extreme right-wing spectrum—as state chairman of the “Freie Sachsen” (Free Saxony) party. Source: dw

CDU business lobby attacks right to part-time work

Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has repeatedly complained that many people are no longer working properly and that their “work-life balance” is too important to them. And with this attitude, economic recovery cannot happen. This inspired the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT) in the CDU to submit a motion to their party conference at the end of next February. Its title: “No legal right to lifestyle part-time work.” In it, the group calls for the right to part-time employment to be restricted. The group’s proposal stipulates that part-time workers should only be eligible for social benefits such as basic income support, child allowance and housing benefit if there are “special reasons.” Source: nd

Controversial millions in funding AfD from the state coffers

The AfD often makes use of the victimisation approach, complaining, for instance, about how other parties stigmatise it. However, a look at the party’s financing provides a different picture, as the AfD benefits significantly from state party financing. From 2025 to early 2029 alone, i.e. during this legislative period of the German Bundestag, the AfD will receive a total of around half a billion euros in state funds. In the case of the AfD, that is particularly controversial once the party is being monitored as a “suspected right-wing extremist organization” and is even listed as “confirmed right-wing extremist” in three federal states. Source: dw

Welfare state in Germany is to become more citizen-oriented and digital

The federal government wants to work with the states and local authorities to comprehensively reform the welfare state in Germany. Its commission, made up of representatives from the federal government, the federal states and local authority associations, has formulated a total of 26 specific recommendations. Among other things, social benefits are to become more accessible and less complicated. For example, child benefit is to be paid automatically after birth in future. A digital portal is to be created for all social benefits, and responsibility will lie with two authorities instead of four in future. Some of the proposals can be implemented already in 2027. Source: tagesschau

“One of the most demonised people in Europe”

High-ranking Thuringian AfD politicians, including Secretary General Daniel Haseloff, invited right-wing extremist Martin Sellner to a meeting in the state parliament. “He is one of the most demonised people in Europe. I wanted to form my own opinion,” Haseloff wrote in on X. Haseloff told the German Press Agency that they had discussed Sellner’s remigration concept and that of the Thuringian AfD—Including their differences. Sellner is considered a leading figure and former head of the Identitarian Movement, which is classified as right-wing extremist by the German domestic intelligence service. Source: bz

“Gaza equals Auschwitz” is Holocaust trivialisation

A 40-year-old man was fined for equating Israel’s warfare in Gaza with the Holocaust in a post on Instagram. He must now pay €6,000. The Tiergarten District Court found the man guilty of incitement to hatred by trivialising Nazi crimes under Section 130 (3) of the Criminal Code. The verdict is not yet final. The current case resembles that of a Gaza activist who had also been convicted by the Tiergarten Magistrates’ Court under the same of the German Criminal Code because she had held up a poster at a Gaza demonstration with the question: “Haven’t we learned anything from the Holocaust?” She was acquitted by the Regional Court in October 2025. Source: lto

30 January 1968: Tet Offensive

This week in working class history

AJ Emerich
27/01/2026

By early 1968, more than 500,000 U.S. troops were deployed in Vietnam, with bombing levels eventually surpassing three times the total of World War II. Forty thousand Americans were dead, hundreds of thousands wounded, and Vietnamese casualties were exponentially higher. Though opposition to the war existed from the start, it was the Tet Offensive that turned simmering dissent into mass resistance. On January 30 and 31, North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and its Viet Cong (VC) launched coordinated surprise attacks on more than 100 towns and cities across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year (Tết Nguyên Đán). The campaign intended to trigger political instability, defections, and rebellions across South Vietnam. Over 80,000 fighters took part in the largest offensive of the war to date. However, militarily, Tet failed to spark the mass uprising and collapse of the South Vietnamese government that Hanoi had hoped for. Politically, however, Tet was decisive.

From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world unleashed nearly its entire military arsenal—short of the atomic bomb—against a tiny, peasant country already decades into its struggle against imperial domination. After a successful Communist revolution in 1945 led by Ho Chi Minh, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established and briefly united from North to South. Promised self-determination under the Atlantic Charter, Ho Chi Minh appealed directly to U.S. President Harry Truman for aid to stave off postwar famine. His letters went unanswered. Vietnam, having already resisted colonial France, fascist Japan, Nationalist China, and the British Empire, now faced the rising power of U.S. capitalism.

Post WWII, the United States financed and armed France’s attempt to reclaim its colony from Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh. Publicly, this was framed as a necessary stand against Communism in Asia. China’s 1949 revolution and the Korean War soon followed, feeding Washington’s fears of a collapsing Pacific order. If Vietnam fell, the “domino theory” warned, Laos, Cambodia, and beyond would follow. As usual, ideology masked material reality: land and resources—rice, rubber, coal, iron ore—were at stake. When France failed to suppress the overwhelmingly popular movement, a peace agreement and withdrawal were reached in 1954.

The United States moved quickly to block Vietnamese reunification, backing the “democratic” Ngo Dinh Diem’s repressive and deeply unpopular puppet government regime in the South. Presidents Kennedy and later Johnson sold this intervention as a defense of “freedom” and a fight against Communism. After the assassinations of Diem and Kennedy, Johnson escalated dramatically to quell growing Northern support, using the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify open war. As with Cuba just years earlier, the U.S. government lied to its public to manufacture consent—or at least indifference—for imperial violence.

The Tet Offensive shattered the carefully cultivated myth that U.S. victory was near. The scale of the offensive exposed official lies and shocked the American public, accelerating the collapse of support for the war as casualties mounted and draft calls expanded. Peace negotiations and troop withdrawals soon followed. The streets filled with protesters. “LBJ, LBJ, how many children have you killed today?” echoed across the United States. Tet marked the moment when millions saw through the war’s justifications—and when organized people proved they could resist, and ultimately defeat, an organized war machine.