Last Stop Stammheim: the Trial of Five Pro-Palestinian Activists Who Attacked Elbit Systems in Germany
Seven o’clock in the morning Friday, 28 August 2026, in Stammheim, a suburb of Stuttgart. For many Germans of the older generation, Stammheim is a name that still resonates – as the place where members of the left-wing extremist terrorist group the Red Army Faction (RAF) were imprisoned and where they died in the 1970s. Many still recall the wanted posters and the special crime time television shows; many still shudder at the memory of the so-called Baader-Meinhof Gang, which was responsible for 33 murders. Their driving force was the ideology of “anti-imperialism”. The perpetrators received their basic military training in camps in Jordan, run by the Palestinian Fatah movement.
At this early hour it is still quiet, even in front of the fortress-like building of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht), right next to the prison complex. It was erected, with its two high-security courtrooms, on precisely the site where the trials against the Baader-Meinhof Gang took place fifty years ago. In two hours, at nine o’clock, the trial is due to resume against a group of five defendants who, on September 8th 2025, forced their way into the premises of Elbit Systems Germany in the city of Ulm – a subsidiary of the Israeli arms manufacturers of the same name – and caused more than a million euros in damage. The defendants filmed their break-in and the devastation they caused. The recordings were intended to support the struggle for a “free Palestine” on social media. The intruders, however, are not members of Hamas or Fatah; not one of them is Palestinian. Who are they?
The Defendants
The oldest defendant is Leandra Rollo Valenzuela, born in Argentina and holding a Spanish passport. No trained profession is known. The 40-year-old states in a personal declaration that since October 2023 she has taken part in almost every legal protest in order to stop the “genocide” of the Palestinians. Busy woman. But without a steady job, this kind of activism might be just about feasible. On a support website for the defendants, Ulm5.info, it is said that before her arrest Rollo Valenzuela worked as a set designer and wrote poetry in her spare time. We also read: “She has attached feeders and water bowls to her bedroom window, where she talks to the pigeons.”
Daniel Tatlow-Devally is 33 years old. He comes from a middle-class family in Ireland; his father is a barrister, his mother a university lecturer. “My actions at the Elbit plant in Ulm were motivated solely by urgent humanitarian considerations,” the Irishman declares. Urgent considerations, not applying to his home country, Ireland, where the numbers of so-called “international protection applicants” went up by 1,200% between 2020 and 2024. Not applying to Germany, his residence of choice, where non-Germans now make up c. 15% of the population but account for c. 35% of all serious crime suspects. Tatlow-Devally’s dad was putting on the poor mouth on Irish state television, saying meekly that he was “fortunate enough to be able to afford to go” to Germany. Perhaps the financial support of his son prior to the latter’s arrest had been consuming too many resources. No publicly available concrete information exists about any regular employment on Tatlow-Devally’s part. What is known, however, are his pronouns: they/them. The support website states that before the arrest Tatlow-Devally was working on a podcast dealing with the connection between art and science, as well as “decolonial and ecological applications of AI”. The thirty-something also enjoys “skateboarding and roller-skating”.
The third defendant is the British subject Walter Tricks, 25-year-old. Like Tatlow-Devally, his preferred pronouns are “they/them”. In a Guardian article he is described as “sociable” and “bubbly”. No trained profession is known. About his pastimes Tricks himself states: “Until two years ago I spent a lot of time making music, then I became more interested in organised activism.” Whether he was legally in Germany at the time of the offence remains unclear. In a personal statement he reels off a long litany of alleged Israeli crimes and then summarises his motivation for the break-in at Elbit Systems as follows: “All of this pain and suffering was orchestrated, profited from, and lobbied into action by the Lockheed Martins, the Rheinmetalls and the Elbit Systems. They prevent our society from achieving real democracy. This action was a part of a global movement that aims to reduce violence at its source.” The global movement of ‘anti-imperialism’, no doubt.
Defendant Hannah Hailu is also 25 years old and British. In her personal statement in court she feels compelled to comment on her sexual orientation: “I am a trans non-binary person, pronouns he/they.” (sic) Trained profession? None. According to Ulm5.info she has at times worked as a babysitter and is famous for her “delicious dishes”. A press report says she is studying “Migration Studies”. Her statement is stuffed with ideology-saturated phrases. The word “settler” appears no fewer than 18 times, in the context of the postcolonial trope of “settler colonialism”, according to which Israel’s Jewish population are merely rightless, land-grabbing “settlers” whose expulsion is justified, “from the river to the sea”. But Israel is not the only eternal culprit. “Have you ever wondered,” Hailu asks, “how the cold miserable European states with little valuable natural resources and relatively small labour capacities are some of the richest, most powerful states globally? Surprise, colonialism.” Some of Hailu’s ancestors hail from Ethiopia; she describes herself as a “proud African”. She claims to have personally suffered under British imperialism. How exactly is not really clear, but at the beginning of her statement she complains about an allegedly “racist” attack on her by means of a rubber chicken: “An official of this court carried a rubber chicken in the pocket of his uniform, squeezing it to make noises. I had immediate fear that someone was making monkey noises in a racially-motivated hate crime.”
The only defendant with German citizenship is the 29-year-old Vivien Kovarbasic. She too identifies as non-binary. She is a trained dancer and appeared as a drag performer in Berlin’s ‘queer’ scene. In 2022 Kovarbasic’s dancing in Cologne was subsidised for two months with federal funds. In a personal statement in court Kovarbasic now complains that she and others lack these funds for their livelihood: “Artists have been defunded.”
Posh Protestors
The Red Army Faction of the 1970s committed murders, robbed banks and carried out kidnappings as part of their ‘anti-imperialist’ struggle, for which they had themselves been trained by Palestinian terrorists, and which ended ultimately in suicide. The defendants standing trial in Stammheim today were radicalised and motivated by the same ideology, but chose a milder form of struggle aimed at securing ‘likes’ on social media.
Both the five RAF perpetrators Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Jan-Carl Raspe, Holger Meins and Gudrun Ensslin and the Ulm 5 come from the educated middle class; at the time of the trials before the Higher Regional Court they were or are on average in their early thirties; they had or have no regular employment and did not or do not primarily earn their living through gainful employment. In contrast to the RAF ‘anti-imperialists’ of the 1970s, some of whom lived in steady relationships and had children, the Ulm 5 are all unmarried and childless and count themselves as part of the so-called ‘queer’ scene. This enables them to occupy one of the popular victim roles from the broad spectrum of the intersectional catalogue of discrimination – something the heterosexual RAF members could not claim. And defendant Hailu can play the trump card, since as a self-defined African she deems herself automatically a victim of colonialism and additionally perceives herself as racially oppressed.
While the Baader-Meinhof Gang was charged with murder and attempted murder, the Ulm 5 face only charges related to criminal damage, trespass and the formation of a criminal organisation. In addition, they are seen as in breach of a particular German law which prohibits the use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations, such as employing publicly the “From the River to the Sea” slogan. While the RAF defendants had to reckon with, and received, life sentences, Rollo Valenzuela, Tatlow-Devally, Tricks, Hailu and Kovarbasic face, at worst, some jail time. But in many of today’s German prisons it would certainly still be possible to feed pigeons, roller-skate, make music, cook and put on a drag performance or two. While doing time, the Elbit burglars would, however, have to learn not to be intimidated by the squeaking of a rubber chicken.
Welcome to Stammheim
The day before, I arrived in Stuttgart by train. My Intercity express train from Frankfurt was 40 minutes late – hardly worth mentioning in Germany these days. From the platform a covered footpath leads across the construction site of “Stuttgart 21”. The underground station was supposed to be finished in 2019 and should have cost just under three billion euros. Now the talk is of almost 15 billion and the targeted year of completion is 2031. I take the underground train 15 to Stammheim, which looks peaceful and ordinary. This is where Stuttgart ends and the countryside begins; this is the last stop on line 15. Only a few minutes’ walk from the notorious prison (Justizvollzugsanstalt, JVA), which today holds around 800 inmates. The main street is a mirror image of Germany in 2026. Two permanently closed German inns, one of them The Lion. Two supermarkets. A few snack bars, one of them Kurdish. A bistro called Dialog that advertises live sports broadcasts. Ethnic Germans are few and far between on the street; they are probably staying in Schloss (castle) Stammheim, now a retirement home. Or they are lying in the cemetery, on whose wall an inscription under a steel helmet and oak leaves commemorates the “hero sons of the municipality of Stammheim who fell for the fatherland”.
Two teenagers on a bench nearby eye me curiously. What would the hero sons – such as Friedrich Siegrist, who was killed in battle in Belgium on August 27th 1917, and whose death is marked for the 109th time on the day of my arrival in Stammheim – think of their hometown today? Would Friedrich order a pizza for seven euros from the Kurd and gaze admiringly at the blonde proprietress of the cosmetics studio across the street, Natalia Ginduzova? Would he notice that there are hardly any Friedrichs, Wilhelms and Alfreds left in Stammheim and that the German-sounding pub Asperg Stüble is run by a Greek? Would Friedrich Siegrist apply for the casual labourer’s job advertised in a shop window (15 euros an hour) and move into the one-bedroom flat advertised in the same place for a monthly rent of 550 euros plus utilities? A multi-storey corner house opposite Dialog appears unoccupied. The façade and roof are covered in broad red and blue lines; the shuttered windows are smeared in garish yellow and purple. The building has stood empty for years; according to locals it was once meant to become a business centre.
At the snack bar Davran I order the seven-euro pizza and a beer. In front of the snack bar is a white bench. A younger man with a glass of rum and coke joins me. We strike up a conversation. He is a Kurd by birth, unemployed, looking after his care-dependent mother. Everything except changing nappies – that is done by the care service. Another man arrives, of Russian descent, middle-aged. A mechanical engineer, unemployed for two years. He would like to emigrate to America. I tell the two of them about my plan to report on the Ulm 5. Yes, they have already noticed queer activists, some of whom arrive in coachloads. The engineer has observed two men dressed as women going into the ladies’ restroom of Asperg Stüble. No one said anything. After all, they were paying guests.
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