The families of American victims of Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens filed a federal lawsuit on Sunday, alleging based on newly disclosed documents that Iran helped fund, plan, and coordinate the terrorist attack last year.
The 154-page lawsuit reveals internal Hamas documents, including a memo that shows Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar requesting an additional $7 million per month from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to fund the attack on Israel. The document was dated December 18, 2022. Described as the mastermind behind the October 7 attack, Sinwar was killed by Israeli soldiers last month.
More than 1,200 people were killed by Hamas, which also kidnapped some 250 hostages and took them to Gaza. Hamas’s inner circle referred to the attack as the “Big Project,” according to the suit.
The other documents include a list of 49 payments made by Iran’s IRGC to Sinwar’s personal discretionary fund for terrorism between 2014 and 2020 and a paper that shows the “Human Resources Branch” of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades handing out scholarships for its members to obtain educational degrees in Iran.
The IRGC proposed that Hamas use gliders to enter Israel from the air and trained the terror operatives to do just that in preparation for the attack. The 40-day glider-training program was held in Lebanon, starting August 5, 2023. That same month, the Iranian military branch also started conducting regular planning meetings with Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iran-backed terror groups.
The defendants named in the lawsuit are the Islamic Republic of Iran, the IRGC, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The latter five groups have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S.
“Money is the lifeblood of terrorism. This suit aims to identify and dismantle the financial networks that fuel atrocities against defenseless individuals,” Motley Rice anti-terrorism and human-rights attorney Michael Elsner said in a statement obtained by National Review. “We are honored to represent these families in their fight for justice.”
The plaintiffs include 37 families whose relatives were killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, while others are residents of southern Israel that underwent emotional distress during or after the attack. Families of American soldiers serving in the Israeli military were also named.
Among them was reservist Moshe Leiter, who was killed in November 2023. His father, Yechiel Leiter, is set to become Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. next year.
Other American victims include Roey Weiser, who was killed while serving near Gaza; Danielle Waldman, who was among the 360 people killed at the Nova music festival in southern Israel; and Judih Weinstein and Gadi Haggai, who were both killed during the Hamas invasion and had their bodies taken to Gaza.
Hamas terrorists killed 46 Americans on October 7 and abducted twelve Americans. Seven U.S. citizens remain in Gaza, while three are presumed dead.
The complaint, filed in Washington, D.C., seeks an unspecified amount of damages for the families under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The litigation follows at least two similar legal actions: a federal lawsuit seeking $1 billion in damages from Iran for aiding the October 7 attack and another seeking $4 billion in damages from the governments of Iran, Syria, and North Korea for supplying Hamas with money, weapons, and knowledge for the massacre. The former was filed in Washington, D.C., and the latter was filed in New York.
“The atrocities committed by Hamas and its co-conspirators on October 7, 2023, all operating with what our clients believe to be both tactical and financial support from Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were acts that cannot be permitted to stand,” Motley Rice anti-terrorism attorney John Eubanks told NR. “We count it a privilege to be trusted by the families we represent to seek accountability and justice on their behalf within the U.S. judicial system.”