Families of American Oct. 7 Hamas attack victims sue Iran for ‘crucial role’ in supporting massacre
The families of American victims of Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, have accused Iran in a lawsuit of supporting the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust while accusing the Islamic Republic of being directly involved in the assault that killed 1,200 people.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington D.C., on behalf of 250 families and survivors of the attack, alleges Iran funded, planned and coordinated the attack with Hamas. Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are named in the complaint.
Additionally, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) are also named in the lawsuit. The suit details Iran’s embrace of various terror groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
“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,” said anti-terrorism attorney John Eubanks, one of several prominent lawyers representing the plaintiffs. “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.”
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Students and community members sang songs and shared stories at the vigil for Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. (Fox News Digital)
The suit stems from secret documents uncovered in Gaza that attorneys said show the IRGC funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. The suit seeks compensatory damages under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act.
Gary Osen, one of the lawyers involved in the case and who has also represented victims of Nazi war crimes, told Fox News Digital that the suit “provides hard evidence of Iran’s crucial role in financing and planning the October 7 attack. But this case is only a first step in a much larger effort to hold all those who aided and abetted Hamas publicly accountable.”
“We intend to follow the evidence wherever else it leads,” he added.
The complaint includes a document from a 2022 meeting of senior Hamas members Yahya Sinwar, Khalil al-Hayya and others hashing out a mutual defense agreement between Hamas and other Iran-backed terror groups should a war break out.
A view of a poster in Iranian capital Tehran, featuring deceased Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar on August 13, 2024. Families of American victims of the Oct. 7 attack are suing Iran over its role in the terror attack. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Also included is a paper about a decision by Hamas to request Iran send Hamas $7 million monthly “to mobilize and prepare” for “confrontations” with Israel. Other documents reveal a list of clandestine payments from the IRGC to Sinwar’s personal discretionary fund for terror activities from 2014 to 2020.
In one document, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh suggested to Sinwar that the group could strengthen ties with Iran and Hezbollah by restoring relations with Syria, amid its civil war, which it did in 2022.
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Gunmen from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, during an anti-Israel military march in Gaza City, Gaza Strip. (Yousef Masoud/Majority World/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
One memo from top Hamas leader Marwan Issa detailed the group’s progress in strengthening ties with other Iranian proxies.
“It has been concluded that a clear message must be conveyed to A-Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah that if Iran or the resistance in Lebanon [Hezbollah] would face a war in the future, we, the Hamas Movement and the Al-Qassam (brigades), are fully prepared to participate,” he wrote, according ot the lawsuit.
The Al-Quassam Brigades is the military wing of Hamas. Among the oddities presented in the documents, are that the brigades maintained a “Human Resources” department that, among other things, dispensed scholarships for its operatives to obtain advanced degrees in Iran.
In addition to the more than 40 Americans, including children, who were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas also took about 250 people hostage, including 12 Americans. The lawsuit also includes Americans killed while fighting for the Israel Defense Forces in Hamas-controlled Gaza and northern Israel, which has been repeatedly attacked by rocket fire by Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy group.
Iranians burn an Israeli flag during a rally marking Quds Day and the funeral of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who were killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy complex in the Syrian capital Damascus, in Tehran, Iran, April 5, 2024. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS)
“Our goal is to create documentation, to demonstrate with solid evidence, including Hamas’ own documents, how Iran was directly involved in financing and planning the attack on October 7,” said Naomi Weiser, whose son Roey was killed defending Israel’s border fence with Gaza. “It was a conscious choice of Iran to set fire to the Middle East and kill our son. This lawsuit is one of the important ways in which we can bring the facts to light and help the public understand what happened.”
In October, Sinwar, who was Hamas’ top leader and believed to be the mastermind behind Oct. 7, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Among the plaintiffs is Yechiel Leiter, the father of Moshe Leiter, who was killed in November 2023 during a battle in Gaza. The elder Leiter was tapped last week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
Yahya Sinwar, terrorist leader, speaks at a podium while at a rally. Israel on Thursday said Sinwar was killed by its forces in Gaza. (Mohammed Talatene/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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“We believe in holding those responsible accountable, and hope that our efforts will contribute to the public’s understanding of what happened on October 7,” Batya Sprei, who lost her brother David to the attack at the Nova music festival, said in a statement. “The attack was not a spontaneous event, and Hamas did not act alone. As Hamas’ own documents make clear, Iran helped finance and plan the attack. Hamas lit the match, but Iran provided the fuel.”
Israel recently launched a retaliatory airstrike against Iran in October after Tehran launched its own strike weeks earlier aimed at the Jewish state. Israel’s strike degraded part of Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu said.
