When Irish citizen Daniel Tatlow-Devally turned 32 on November 8th, it was just like any other day in the previous two months: locked up for 23 hours.<\/p>\n
The Dubliner is on remand in the southern German town of Ulm and faces up to five years in prison for his alleged role in a break-in at a German subsidiary of Israeli arms firm Elbit on September 8th, causing extensive damage.<\/p>\n
With four others from Germany, the UK and Spain, Tatlow-Devally, who uses they\/them pronouns, is likely to be charged with trespassing, destruction of property and membership of a criminal organisation.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say the group behind the early-morning break-in destroyed office and technical equipment with axes, detonated smoke bombs and sprayed the facade of the building.<\/p>\n
The group posted a video of the attack online, waited for police to show up, were detained at the scene and brought to a local prison.<\/p>\n
What happened subsequently has infuriated and outraged their family and friends.<\/p>\n
They accuse the German authorities of chicanery, intimidatory practices and a politicised approach to the case \u2013 charges rejected by the federal prosecutor in Stuttgart.<\/p>\n
After the arrest, father Conor Devally said his son was detained for 30 hours in a police cell, \u201cstripped to his fundamentals\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was denied access to a lawyer despite repeated requests,\u201d said Devally.<\/p>\n
The federal prosecutor in Stuttgart disputes this, saying Tatlow-Devally was read their rights on September 8th \u2013 in English \u2013 but \u201cat first relinquished explicitly their right to a public defender\u201d.<\/p>\n
One was appointed on September 9th by the examining magistrate, the prosecutor added.<\/p>\n
This is not the whole story, says Tatlow-Devally\u2019s lawyer Christina Mucha.<\/p>\n
She said Tatlow-Devally declined a court-appointed lawyer, telling police that a lawyer of their choosing \u2013 naming Christina Mucha \u2013 would be in contact.<\/p>\n
Mucha says police blocked several attempts by her to access her client, unusual behaviour that meant she met Tatlow-Devally only directly ahead of the remand trial.<\/p>\n
The federal prosecutor declined to comment on the 30-hour period without legal representation.<\/p>\n
Last month about 40 people protested outside the German embassy in Dublin over the refusal of bail and the 23-hour remand lock-in, allowing for just one 30-minute visit every fortnight.<\/p>\n
![\"29\/10\/2025](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/53XONKTX7FBYRBSBOOYSP2QFNA.JPG\")
29\/10\/2025 – A protest at the German Embassy in Dublin, in support of Irish Man Daniel Tatlow Devally and other protestors who were arrested after the storming of the Israeli wepons company Elbit Systems in the German City of Ulm. Photograph: Alan Betson \/ The Irish Times
<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the federal prosecutor in Stuttgart denies that the conditions are \u201cin any way unusual, these are the usual restrictions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mucha confirms that 23-hour lock-in is standard in such remand cases in Ulm and the surrounding state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s defence team take issue with the prosecutor drawing on article 129 of the criminal code, pertaining to criminal and terrorist organisations, as it remains unclear which criminal organisation the prosecutor has in mind.<\/p>\n
The defence team for the group say the alleged actions of their clients caused damage to property, not persons, and were \u201cclearly aimed at a legitimate goal, namely, to end the killing of civilians in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n
They accuse Elbit, a major Israeli arms company that supplies drones, of \u201cwar crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n
`Emergency\u2019<\/p>\n
According to Mucha, the defence will draw on German legal provisions allowing for extreme action \u201cin self defence or an emergency, and that committing such an act might prevent bad things happening in Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n
In September a Stuttgart judge agreed with prosecutors that there was a real flight risk and ordered all five suspects be detained on remand until trial.<\/p>\n
Mucha and other defence lawyers say this is disproportionate given their clients filmed the attack, posted it online, waited for police officers to show up and want the case to come to trial.<\/p>\n
Asked have they confessed to carrying out the attacks, she replied: \u201cThey have not commented on this, it still has to be proven \u2013 even with the video.\u201d <\/p>\n
Devally, a senior counsel in Dublin, is anxious not to comment on legal aspects of his son\u2019s case but says it has an \u201cintimidatory feel\u201d with \u201cfrightening background noise\u201d from the German state.<\/p>\n
Devally said that, on a joint visit with his wife, two prosecutor\u2019s office officials from Stuttgart \u201cspoke in high voices in a very small anteroom of their authority to sit in\u201d on their meeting with their son, along with a translator.<\/p>\n
Permission for a later visit was denied at first, Devally was told, because the same translator was not available.<\/p>\n
Access to reading material has been limited, says Devally, while letters \u2013 forwarded first from Ulm to the prosecutor in Stuttgart for vetting \u2013 can take up to three weeks to arrive.<\/p>\n
Like the lawyer team, Devally takes issue with what he views as \u201ccriminal language\u201d being used by prosecutors in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey seem to be deploying words that in any other jurisdiction would be reserved for gangs who run profit-motivated scams,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Devally says his son\u2019s prison is clean and the food is acceptable \u2013 \u201cat least from a calorific content point of view\u201d. Daniel is being \u201clooked after physically\u201d and has begun a Calisthenics exercise programme, Devally says, though his son\u2019s complexion now reflects his \u201climited access to daylight\u201d.<\/p>\n
Tatlow-Devally studied philosophy in Trinity College Dublin and has lived in Berlin for the last seven years, at first on a Humboldt University scholarship in philosophy and neuroscience.<\/p>\n
Subsequently they studied and worked in the fields of AI, behavioural psychology and ethics and had a job offer they were unable to take up because of their remand in Ulm.<\/p>\n
Devally says his son has had an interest in political activism for many years, from the oppression of the Kurdish people to the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza after the Hamas terror attack of October 7th, 2023.<\/p>\n
Tatlow-Devally was a regular at Gaza solidarity marches in Berlin and complained to their parents about high police presence at these demonstrations and arbitrary police violence.<\/p>\n
Asked if the involvement of an Israel firm was a relevant element in their investigation, a prosecutor spokesman said the attack was on a German-registered firm and \u201cwhether any anti-Semitic motivation needs to be considered in sentencing is the subject of the investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Clashed<\/p>\n
Tatlow-Devally is not the only Irish national who has clashed with the German authorities over the Israel-Palestine issue.<\/p>\n
Two other Berlin-based Irish nationals were served removal notices last spring and subsequently charged for their alleged role in a demonstration that turned violent at a Berlin university in October 2024.<\/p>\n
Charges against one, Bert Murray, were dropped while the second, Shane O\u2019Brien, will go on trial on February 9th accused of trespassing and physically attacking police officers, injuring one, and helping co-accused of evading arrest.<\/p>\n
In a separate case, Berlin police have concluded their investigation into a Gaza solidarity demonstration in Berlin last August where an officer was filmed punching Irish-based Kitty O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
The officer remains in service and a Berlin state prosecutor has opened an investigation of its own. <\/p>\n
Facing into a Christmas without his son at the dinner table, Conor Devally says he is deeply disturbed by Germany\u2019s response to protest against Israel\u2019s military actions in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have spent half a century saying at least the Germans have faced up to what they did, and I can see it must have been a struggle,\u201d said Devally. \u201cBut some of the lesson appears to have been washed out. Instead of learning the lessons they are almost applying a rigid rule that is pro-Israel, regardless of rights and wrongs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Irish citizen Daniel Tatlow-Devally turned 32 on November 8th, it was just like any other day in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[19620,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,1109,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-237352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-bob","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-media","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115734671827745177","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}