The Justice Department announced criminal charges Tuesday against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior militants in connection with the Oct. 7, 2023, rampage in Israel, marking the first effort by American law enforcement to formally call out the masterminds of the attack.
The seven-count criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City includes charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, resulting in death. It also accuses Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah of providing financial support and weapons, including rockets, and military supplies.
The impact of the case may be mostly symbolic given that Sinwar is believed to be hiding out in tunnels and the Justice Department says three of the six defendants named in the complaint are believed now to be dead. But officials say additional actions are expected as part of a broader effort to target the operations of a militant group that was designated in 1997 by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization and has been linked to a series of deadly attacks on Israel, including suicide bombings.
The complaint was originally filed under seal in February to give the U.S. time to try to take into custody the then-Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, but was unsealed Tuesday after Haniyeh's death in July and other developments in the region lessened the need for secrecy, the Justice Department said.
"The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas' operations," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a video statement. "These actions will not be our last."
The charges come as the White House says it is developing a new cease-fire and hostage deal proposal with its Egyptian and Qatari counterparts to try to bring about an agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the nearly 11-month war in Gaza.
A U.S. official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press there was no reason to believe the charges would affect the ongoing negotiations.
National security spokesman John Kirby said the recent "executions" of six hostages, including one American, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, by Hamas underscore "the sense of urgency" in the talks.
"We are investigating Hersh's murder, and each and every one of the brutal murders of Americans, as acts of terrorism," Garland said in the statement. "We will continue to support the whole of government effort to bring the Americans still being held hostage home."
Sinwar was appointed the overall head of Hamas after the killing of Haniyeh in Iran and sits atop Israel's most-wanted list. He is believed to have spent most of the past 10 months living in tunnels under Gaza, and it is unclear how much contact he has with the outside world. He was a long-serving Palestinian prisoner freed in an exchange of the type that would be part of a cease-fire and hostage release deal.
Haniyeh was also charged.
Other Hamas leaders facing charges include Marwan Issa, the deputy leader of Hamas' armed wing in Gaza, who helped plan last year's attack and who Israel says was killed when fighter jets struck an underground compound in central Gaza in March; Khaled Mashaal, another Haniyeh deputy and a former leader of the group thought to be based in Qatar; Mohammed Deif, Hamas' longtime shadowy military leader, who is thought to be dead following an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza in July; and Lebanon-based Ali Baraka, Hamas' head of external relations.
During the Oct. 7 attack, militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage. Roughly 100 hostages remain, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
The criminal complaint describes the massacre as the "most violent, large-scale terrorist attack" in Hamas' history. It details how Hamas operatives who arrived in southern Israel with "trucks, motorcycles, bulldozers, speedboats, and paragliders" engaged in a brutal campaign of violence that included rape, genital mutilation and machine-gun shootings at close range.
It references a widely circulated video showing a largely unclothed and unconscious woman in the back of a pickup truck as Hamas operatives chanted "Allahu Akbar."
The document also says the defendants in the years and weeks preceding the attack openly called for violence against Israel and advocated even more mayhem after Oct. 7, citing a statement from Mashaal three days later that said: "I call on you at this moment, I call on every one of you. Responding to Jihad is an individual responsibility. Whether you fight collectively or individually, this is your individual responsibility."
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction and forced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, often multiple times.
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out months of negotiations by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor along the border of Egypt and a second corridor running across Gaza.
Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by President Joe Biden in July. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged "total victory" over Hamas and blames it for the failure of the negotiations.