Note: This article was written prior to the demonstrations held in Berlin on 27 September.
A week before what are likely to be the largest demonstrations in German history in support of Palestine, a group of lawyers in Berlin are suing members of the current and previous governments, as well as CEOs of major arms companies, for complicity in the genocide in Gaza. On the day the lawsuit was announced, a group of activists observing trials against the pro-Palestinian movement released a devastating report on the state of justice in the city of Berlin.
On Friday, 19 September 2025, a group of lawyers from Berlin, with the support of the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD) and Law for Palestine, filed a 100-page lawsuit against 11 political leaders and major German arms companies for their complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The charges were filed at the State Attorney’s Office in Karlsruhe (Generalbundesanwaltschaft) against former and current members of the German government and CEOs of arms manufacturers, specifically former Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, former Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck, current Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, current Federal Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Katherina Reiche, Federal Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius, as well as Dr Jörg Stratmann, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG, Michael Humbek, CEO of Dynamit Nobel Defence GmbH, and Dr Alexander Sagel and Susanne Wiegand, current and former CEOs of RENK Group AG.
Germany is clearly a co-perpetrator of the genocide in Gaza, both in words and deeds. All the leaders sued by the group of lawyers have reiterated their complete sectarian devotion to the terrorist state of Israel and defended (almost) all its criminal actions. The German state has voted against or abstained from all votes in the UN or the EU to stop the massacre in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, and denies that Israel is committing apartheid. Germany is the only country in the world that, following South Africa’s genocide lawsuit before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has presented itself as a co-defender of Israel.
Furthermore, as the lawyers explain in their lawsuit, Germany has increased its arms sales to the genocidal state of Israel tenfold since 7 October 2023, making it the second largest exporter of weapons to the Zionist state. Some of the large companies that have benefited from this increase in arms sales are those of the defendants mentioned above. War mercenaries are lining their pockets with money stained with Palestinian blood, with the approval of the German political leadership. This has led to a lawsuit filed by Nicaragua against Germany at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for its complicity in genocide.
Germany also continues to face three other lawsuits filed earlier by lawyers’ associations in the same country on behalf of people who have lost family members in Gaza, for its sale of arms to the genocidal state after the ICJ warned that Israel could be committing genocide in February 2024. A couple of these lawsuits have been dismissed on grounds that would make Kafka turn in his grave. The reasons given by the state’s legal team for dismissing the lawsuits are both Kafkaesque and stupid, such as the dates of arms export licences; you can’t stop what’s already been sent, but we can’t know when they’ll send more and we’re not going to ban it preventively, because the state’s legal team is unable to determine whether the weapons sent to Israel have been used to attack or defend in a textbook genocide.
Meanwhile, within its own territory, Germany criminalises all solidarity with Palestine. Demonstrations and events are being suppressed with increasing brutality. Freedom of assembly, expression and the press are being repressed by an authoritarian and racist state apparatus. This repression is overwhelming the courts with activists calling for an end to the genocide.
It is estimated that in Berlin alone, since 7 October 2023, 11,000 investigations have been opened against pro-Palestinian activists. Many of these investigations, under the mandate of the Berlin government, are going to trial. Hundreds of activists are facing trials for their participation in demonstrations, occupations and their activity on social media. That is why, in April 2024, a group of activists who had been witnessing and documenting racist trials against racialised people and political activists for 10 years split up and created a subgroup that attends trials against solidarity with Palestine.
This group of trial observers shows solidarity with people criminalised by the German government for their political activity against the terrorist state of Israel. Sometimes these same people are accused of spreading terrorist propaganda for shouting or posting on social media, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, a slogan that the German government, without evidence, attributes to Hamas. The group of observers also attends the trials to document them, as no public transcripts of what is said in them are kept.
Having attended more than 200 of these trials, these activists have presented a damning report with their conclusions on what they have seen in these proceedings. Among their conclusions are that the German judicial system acts as another arm of German state repression and is carrying out genuine lawfare against political activists. In fact, compared to other highly repressed political movements, such as those on the ‘radical’ left, those fighting for the rights of the Kurdish people, or climate activism, simply based on the numbers of trials held and planned, the authors conclude that the pro-Palestinian movement is the most persecuted in Germany since its reunification. They also conclude that there are clear racist biases in the state’s legal system and among many judges. Racialised people are often forced to attend courses on adapting to German society in addition to their sentence. Trials are largely held in high-security courtrooms, which re-criminalises a person whose only charge may have been trespassing on private property for staging a sit-in at their own university.
The observers themselves face difficulties in their work, with security personnel making them leave all their belongings in lockers outside and not allowing them to bring paper, pens and water into trials that can last up to five hours. For more information, the report translated into several languages can be found here.
This lawfare paid for by citizens, together with the repression of freedom of expression and assembly in the streets and censorship on social media, represents a clear and dangerous setback for democratic freedoms in Germany. A new large demonstration is expected on Saturday, 27 September, also in Berlin, and inshallah the streets will be filled with Palestinian flags and condemnations of genocidal Israel and its accomplice Germany.
