WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland announced criminal charges against Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar, an action spurred by the group’s murder over the weekend of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli.
The charges, filed in federal court on New York’s Southern District, are “for financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States,” Garland said in a video posted Tuesday afternoon on the Department of Justice website.
The charges include crimes that could get the death penalty. In addition to the organization, six individuals are named, including Sinwar. Three have been killed by Israel in recent months, including Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh. The three who are alive are Sinwar; Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, based in Qatar; and Ali Baraka, a top official based in Lebanon.
“Those defendants, armed with weapons political support and funding from the Government of Iran and support from Hezbollah have led Hamas’ efforts to destroy the State of Israel and murder civilians in support of that aim in its attacks over the past three decades,” he said.
Garland honed in on the events of Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its war against Israel with massacres and mass abductions, and over the weekend, when Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages were shot in the head as Israeli rescuers moved in.
“On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists murdered nearly 1,200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians,” Garland said. “They perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This weekend, we learned that Hamas murdered six more hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old Israeli American. We are investigating his murder and each and every one of the brutal murders of Americans as acts of terrorism.”
Charging Hamas and Sinwar, who is in hiding, allows the federal government to add resources to tracking the group and subpoenaing individuals who are alleged to support it. Naming Meshaal suggests the Biden administration may plan to pressure Qatar, one of a handful of countries that has relations with Hamas, to hand over its leaders based in the country.
Hamas is already designated by the U.S. Treasury and the State Department as a terrorist organization, which allows the United States to freeze any funds the group keeps in dollar accounts, and a release said the FBI, which will lead the new investigation, is looking at how Hamas is financed.
“Since 2019, Hamas’ military wing has used social media and other platforms to call for cryptocurrency contributions from supporters abroad, including in the United States, to Hamas-controlled virtual wallets, explicitly acknowledging that those payments would be used to fund Hamas’ campaign of violence,” it said. “Through these mechanisms, Hamas has received tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency payments to fund its activities.”
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank who was once a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI said the charges raised the stakes.
“Treasury and State Department designations are one thing, but indicting specific Hamas leaders on terrorism charges for their roles in the October 7 attack — including the deaths of American citizens — this takes this to another level entirely,” he said. “The message is that this is a criminal entity, not part of the postwar solution, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the problem.”
The charges notably were filed in the Southern District of New York, staffed with federal prosecutors who have for decades been leading terrorism prosecutions.
“Our commitment is clear: if you hurt one member of our community, you hurt all of us — and we stand with all victims of Hamas’ reign of terror,” said the district’s U.S. Attorney, Damian Williams. “We will bring justice to this terrorist organization from the top down for the atrocities they have committed.”
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