An Irish citizen held on remand for six months in Germany over an attack on an Israeli arms company has expressed concern over the psychological consequences of their pretrial detention.
Dubliner Daniel Tatlow-Devally has been in prison since last September after a break-in at the German subsidiary of Israel’s largest arms company Elbit Systems.
Tatlow-Devally is one of five people who were arrested at the factory in the southwestern city of Ulm on September 8th.
Next month, all five go on trial in Stuttgart on charges of trespassing, causing damage to property and membership of a criminal organisation.
Tatlow-Devally is being held on 23-hour solitary lockdown, allowed just 30-minute family visits every fortnight and, in letters to loved ones, is worried about the consequences of pretrial detention.
“I wonder about all the ways I am already used to having my freedom limited and there is honestly a part of me that is worried I will need time to get used to being free again, that it won’t come back naturally,” said Tatlow-Devally, who uses they-them pronouns, in a letter read out by their sister Clara at an event in Berlin.
An Elbit Systems’ staff member looks at his phone next to some of the company’s weapons at a defence event in Paris in 2022. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty
“I do my best to keep my mind as free as I can to compensate for how unfree my body is,” they added. “When I practice Greek spelling, or write, or read a book out loud to myself, I do my best to keep my mind in contact with the world in which I will live when I am free.”
Clara Tatlow-Devally said the German state “seems to have made up its mind” about her brother and the other co-defendants.
“They seem to think that fair process does not apply,” she told supporters at the Berlin gathering on Sunday evening.
Tatlow-Devally’s mother Mimi has expressed fears of “a show trial to come”, given the terms of her son’s detention since September, in particular how a month passed before their family could reach them.
“No news was transmitted to Daniel that their family was seeking to contact them,” she said at a press conference on Monday in Berlin. “They thought we had disowned them but this is not the case in any way.”
Daniel’s family members, from left, Clara Tatlow-Devally, Conor Devally and Mimi Tatlow-Devally. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Lawyers for Tatlow-Devally and four others – who are British, German and Spanish citizens – describe their clients as human rights defenders and say their actions were justified to halt production of components and products used by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza.
Defence lawyer Nina Onèr said it will be “complex in legal and practical terms” to establish the precise role of Elbit System’s German subsidiary in the Gaza offensive. To date, she said, the German public prosecutor has declined defence demands to investigate.
“They are not going to be handing out papers to us with data and, in a court of law, every aspect of what we are trying to prove legally will have to be proved factually,” said Onèr. “I am sure we will make it work, even without the prosecutor’s help.”
Trial preparation has been difficult, she said, as it has not been possible for all defendants to meet together in one room with their lawyers. Another complicating factor is establishing the cost of the damage caused, initially estimated at €200,000 and now claimed to be around €1 million.
Defence lawyers take issue, too, with the choice of venue for next month’s trial: a high-security courtroom in the Stammheim complex. This is associated historically with the 1970s trials of members of the far-left Red Army Faction and, lawyers say, chosen deliberately to imply the five defendants are “highly criminal people, something we strongly oppose”.
Defence lawyer Matthias Schuster said: “Our clients are not dangerous but should appear so to, in return, justify the strict prison conditions.”