The Justice Department is charging several top-ranking Hamas terrorists for their role in perpetrating the October 7, 2023, mass slaughter of Israeli civilians that jump-started the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind October 7, and five other senior Hamas officials are facing federal terrorism charges for orchestrating the October 7 attacks, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. This will be the first official step towards holding Hamas criminally accountable almost a year after the massacre took place. Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,000 innocent civilians on October 7, including over 40 American citizens.
“The Justice Department has charged Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas for financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans, as an act of terrorism. The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations. These actions will not be our last.”
The criminal complaint, unsealed in the Southern District of New York, lists seven charges, including conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, conspiracy to provide material support for acts of terrorism, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction resulting in death.
The complaint is based mainly on FBI special agent Paula Menges’s counterterrorism investigation that covers the October 7 attacks and traces Hamas’s alleged terrorist activity all the way back to the organization’s founding mission to violently eradicate the state of Israel.
The U.S. deemed Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997, and the organization continues to hold that designation. Hamas terrorist attacks dating back to 1996 are listed in the complaint, and numerous U.S. citizens died as a result of the terrorist activities.
“On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed its most violent, large-scale terrorist attack to date,” the complaint reads.
“In the early morning hours of October 7, 2023, Hamas sent more than 2,000 armed fighters into farms and towns in southern Israel, where they carried out the massacres of over a thousand people and the kidnappings of more than 200 others,” the complaint adds.
“During the October 7 Hamas Massacres, Hamas terrorists weaponized sexual violence against Israeli women, including rape and genital mutilation. Hamas also targeted civilian populations with a barrage of rockets, and claimed that its fighters fired more than 5,000 such rockets at towns and cities in southern Israel during the attacks. As of the date of this Complaint, at least 43 American citizens were among those murdered, and at least ten American citizens were taken hostage or remain unaccounted for.”
Additionally, the complaint identifies the material support Hamas received from the Iranian regime and Hezbollah, an allied terrorist organization, that allowed it to carry out the attack on October 7. Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah’s continued attacks in northern Israel is central to Iran’s “years-long strategy to encircle Israel with armed proxy groups, instigate turmoil, and promote acts of terrorism,” the complaint asserts.
Before October 7, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary wing of Iran’s armed forces, also aided Hamas by giving financial support, training, weapons, and other supplies.
One of the defendants, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, died in July during a visit to Iran for the inauguration of its new president. Hamas and Iran have promised to violently retaliate against Israel for Haniyeh’s death. Another defendant, Mohammed Deif, was pronounced dead by Israeli forces after an airstrike last month, but Hamas refused to confirm whether he had died.
The charges come days after the death of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages at the hands of Hamas personnel. The bodies of the six victims were found in a tunnel beneath Rafah, a city in the southern part of Gaza that Biden officials warned Israel against invading. Hamas fighters kidnapped Goldberg-Polin during the Nova music festival on October 7, where a grenade blew off his left arm during Hamas’s rampage.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their team of cease-fire negotiators met in the situation room Monday to discuss the six hostage deaths and the ongoing negotiations. The U.S., Egypt, and Qatar finalized a death last month to pause the war and exchange the remaining hostages, and Israel agreed to the proposal. Hamas declined to participate in the diplomatic effort and rejected the proposal.
Biden told reporters Monday that he spoke to Goldberg-Polin’s parents and blamed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not doing enough to secure the release of the hostages.