U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland filed criminal charges Tuesday in federal court in New York against six Hamas leaders, including its top leader, Yahya Sinwar, for the October 7 terror attacks in Israel and their past activities.
Garland’s federal court complaint cites crimes including terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder and even money laundering, and acknowledges that three of the defendants (including Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on July 31) are dead, while the others remain at large.
Garland justified filing the charges in the United States by citing the six Hamas leaders’ involvement in “funding, directing, and supervising a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States,” according to the Justice Department in a statement.
“They murdered thousands of civilians, including Americans”
Garland said that for three decades Hamas “has murdered thousands of civilians, including dozens of American citizens,” and that on October 7 it 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 the move was just the beginning, “and it won’t be the last, because the Justice Department has a long memory: We will pursue terrorists who kill 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.”
