The US Department of Justice on Tuesday announced criminal charges against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior militants in connection with an attack in Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
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 US 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.
Photo: AFP
The effect of the case might be mostly symbolic given that Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels and the justice department says three of the six defendants named in the complaint are believed to be dead.
However, 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 US 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 US time to try to take into custody the then-Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, but was unsealed on 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,” US 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 ceasefire 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 US official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters that there was no reason to believe the charges would affect the ongoing negotiations.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that 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 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 ceasefire 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’ 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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS