ISRAEL – The US has charged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and several other prominent figures in the Palestinian group in connection with its deadly attack in Israel on 7 October last year. The justice department said it was indicting six Hamas members with seven charges, including the murder of dozens of US citizens, conspiracy to finance terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction.

The criminal complaint covers decades of alleged attacks by Hamas, as well as last October’s unprecedented assault. It is the first step by US law enforcement to hold accountable the ringleaders of that attack, but has been seen by analysts as partly symbolic, not least because some of those named in the indictment are already dead. In a video statement on Tuesday US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the defendants were responsible for financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States”.

The group also “led Hamas’s efforts to destroy the state of Israel and murder civilians in support of that aim”, Garland said. He highlighted the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, in which the group “murdered entire families” in “the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust”. The charges were filed in February, but were kept under wraps until Tuesday in case the US had the opportunity to arrest any of the accused, an unnamed justice department official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. The reason for the timing of the US charges was not immediately clear, although the recent discovery in Gaza of the body of an Israeli-American hostage – and five others – might have given the move “extra impetus”, one analyst told the BBC.

The charges themselves were partly about the US sending “a message” to Hamas and anyone working with the group, added Prof Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow of the UK think tank Chatham House. In his comments, Garland referred to the Israeli-American found dead in Gaza at the weekend, 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, as well as the other American citizens killed or taken hostage in the 7 October attack. “We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans, as an act of terrorism,” Garland said. (BBC)…[+]