The Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garlandfiled criminal charges Tuesday in federal court in New York against six Hamas leadersincluding its top executive, Yahya Sinwarfor the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and for his previous activities.
Garland’s complaint in federal court cites crimes including: terrorism, assassination plot and even money launderingand acknowledges that three of those reported (including Ismael Haniyeh, assassinated in Tehran on July 31) are dead, while the others remain at large.
Garland justified the filing of the charges in the United States by the participation of these six Hamas leaders in “financing, directing and supervising a decades-long campaign to assassinate American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States,” according to the Justice Department in a statement.
Garland said that for three decades, Hamas “murdered thousands of civilians, including dozens of American Citizens“, and that on October 7, he murdered nearly 1,200 people, including 40 Americans.
Similarly, one of the six hostages found dead last weekend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was also American. “We investigate Hersh’s murder and every brutal crime committed by Americans as an act of terrorism,” Garland added.
The attorney general said that today’s actions are just the beginning, “and they will not be the last, because the Department of Justice has a long memory: We will hunt down the terrorists responsible “of the murder of Americans and those who support them, until the end of their days,” he promised.
Garland did not forget to mention the Iranian government and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah as those who arm and politically support Hamas in its attempts to “destroy the State of Israel.”
