Federal prosecutors have charged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and five other senior members of the group with planning and carrying out “years of terrorist attacks in Israel, including the October 7 massacre,” according to a comprehensive complaint unsealed Tuesday.

The "criminal complaint," originally filed in New York in February, includes two other senior Hamas members who were not previously believed to be directly involved in the attacks, and lists the number of Americans believed to have been killed as 43.

The other leaders named are Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, who was assassinated by Israel in Tehran on July 31, “after a bomb was secretly smuggled into the guesthouse where he was staying,” according to U.S. intelligence; Mohammed Deif, the head of the movement’s military wing; Marwan Issa, the deputy head of the movement’s military wing; Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official based in Beirut; and Khaled Meshaal, the former head of Hamas’s political bureau, who continues to hold a senior position in the movement, according to the lawsuit.

The Israeli occupation authorities claim that they killed Al-Daif and Ibrahim Issa in Israeli air strikes during the fighting in Gaza.

Meshaal, who lives in Qatar, and Haniyeh were not known to have been involved in carrying out the October 7 attacks. The two men, along with Baraka, were outside Gaza when the attacks, which took Israel by surprise, occurred, and Haniyeh was living in Doha before his death.

According to American and Israeli intelligence, the plans surrounding the attack were a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few inside Gaza, such as Sinwar and Deif. The American accusations against Hamas politicians are seen as a development aimed at besieging the movement’s activities in places like Qatar or Turkey.

The allegations come at a tense political time, as the White House tries to salvage ceasefire talks and after revelations over the weekend that six hostages were killed in Gaza, including a 23-year-old Israeli-American, Hersh Goldberg Polin, whose death sparked an outpouring of grief in the United States.

Goldberg-Pulin was among about 250 people taken hostage on October 7. Seven other Americans remain in Gaza, but three are believed to have died either on the day of the attack, October 7, or shortly after. The fate of the other four is unknown.

“We are investigating Hirsch’s murder, and all of the brutal murders of Americans, as acts of terrorism,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “We will continue to support government efforts to bring home Americans who are still being held hostage.”

US officials have indicted leaders of what the US government calls "terrorist groups" in the past, although they face little chance of being arrested.

Among the seven charges facing the Hamas leaders are: “Conspiracy to kill American citizens, conspiracy to finance terrorism, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction resulting in death, and conspiracy to support terrorism resulting in death. Some of the charges date back to 1997.”

The complaint largely addresses Hamas’s history and decades-long record, including bombings in the 1990s “that killed Americans,” as well as statements made by Hamas officials identified in the complaint. The complaint added that Hamas has received funding through donations, cryptocurrencies, and transfers from the government of Iran.

The Justice Department said the charges were kept secret after they were filed in February in the hope of arresting Mr. Haniyeh and possibly additional defendants and preventing them from going into hiding. But after Mr. Haniyeh’s killing, the department decided there was no longer sufficient reason to keep the charges secret. “American officials were also deeply concerned that making the charges public would anger Hamas and endanger Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s life. But his killing last week changed that calculus,” according to the New York Times.

The United States designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 "after a series of bombings in Israel that killed dozens of civilians, including women and children, and the group's charter calls for the destruction of Israel," officials said.

The United States also designated Sinwar and Deif as terrorists in 2015.

Sinwar has long been seen as one of the militant group's most influential leaders and is considered the architect of the October 7 attacks. He also became the movement's political leader after Haniyeh's killing in late July.

Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1962, and was raised by his parents who, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, were displaced in the Nakba of 1948.

After being arrested by the Israeli occupation authorities several times, Sinwar spent more than two decades in an Israeli prison until he was released in a prisoner exchange in 2011. After rising through the ranks of Hamas, he was elected its leader in Gaza in 2017.

In bringing the criminal charges, the US Justice Department cited the extent of Hamas attacks in the complaint.

“Hamas and its leaders have continued to espouse the destruction of Israel as Hamas’s primary goal,” the complaint says, “and to use murder and other violent acts of terrorism against Israelis and those who support Israel, including Americans, as a primary means of achieving that goal. As a key element of this mission, Hamas leaders have specifically called for retaliation against the United States in response to U.S. support for Israel’s existence.”

The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands has issued arrest warrants over Israel’s war on Gaza, accusing both sides of war crimes. In May, it sought arrest warrants for Haniyeh, Deif and Sinwar, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant.

According to the New York Times, “In an interview conducted on October 8, 2023, on Russia Today, Baraka said that Hamas had been secretly planning the attack for two years.”

"Zero Hour was kept completely secret. Only a limited number of Hamas leaders knew about it," he said. "The number of people who knew about the attack and its timing can be counted on the fingers of one hand."