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US Unseals Charges Against Hamas Days After Death of American
(Bloomberg) -- The US Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had charged six senior leaders of Hamas with terrorism and conspiracy to kill Americans, days after six hostages including an Israeli-US citizen were slain in the Gaza Strip.
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The charges against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and other top Hamas operatives were filed in February and include counts linked to Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel as well as a string of other attacks over more than a decade. In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Hamas leaders had financed and directed a decades-long campaign to murder Americans and endanger US national security.
“The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations,” Garland said. “These actions will not be our last. The Justice Department has a long memory.”
Garland cited the death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the 23-year-old Israeli-American who was captured in the Oct. 7 attack and who was killed with five other hostages over the weekend, in his statement. He said the department was investigating Goldberg-Polin’s killing as an act of terrorism.
The Justice Department didn’t say why it waited until Tuesday to unseal the charges. As the American presidential election campaign has heated up, Republicans have accused President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, of not doing enough to secure the hostages’ release or support Israeli forces’ campaign against Hamas.
The Biden administration has worked for months to forge a cease-fire accord that would end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and lead to the release of the hostages. Israel and Hamas have so far failed to agree on a proposal put forward by the US, Qatar and Egypt. On Tuesday, White House spokesman John Kirby said “the killing over the weekend just underscores the sense of urgency that we have to have.”
Hamas is designated a terrorist group by the US and the European Union. The Oct. 7 attack killed some 1,200 people, including about 40 Americans.
Among those charged was Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was killed in a bomb blast in Iran in July, an attack that Iran blamed on Israel. Israel has so far declined to take responsibility for Haniyeh’s death, though the killing has sparked fears that Iran, and its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas might retaliate and plunge the region into fresh conflict.
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