Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is one of six people charged in the US with a deadly attack on Israel

The United States has filed charges against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and several other prominent figures in the Palestinian group in connection with their deadly attack in Israel on October 7 last year.

The Justice Department said it was indicting six Hamas members on seven counts, including murder of U.S. citizens, conspiracy to finance terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction.

The criminal complaint allegedly concerns decades of Hamas attacks as well as the unprecedented attack on southern Israel almost a year ago.

This is the first step by U.S. law enforcement to bring the masterminds of the October 7 attack to justice. However, up to three of the people named in the indictment are already dead and Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels somewhere beneath Gaza.

In a video message on Tuesday, Garland said the defendants were responsible for “funding and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States.”

The group also “led Hamas' efforts to destroy the State of Israel and to murder civilians in support of that goal.”

He referred to Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, in which the group “murdered entire families” and was “the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

“They murdered the elderly and small children. They used sexual violence against women as a weapon, including rape and genital mutilation.”

He added that the group “murdered over 1,200 people” during the attack and “committed the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

Other Hamas leaders indicted include former leader Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Issa, deputy leader of the organization's armed wing, Khaled Mashaal, who leads the group outside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as Mohammed Deif and Ali Baraka.

The charges include conspiracy to bomb a public place resulting in death, conspiracy to finance terrorism, and providing material support for terrorist acts resulting in death.

The Justice Department’s complaint states that all “defendants are either deceased or still at large.”

Haniyeh, Issa and Deif were reportedly killed in recent months in attacks that were either claimed by Israel or attributed to Israel.

In his remarks on Tuesday, the attorney general referred to the killing of 23-year-old American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin last week, as well as 42 other American citizens killed and 10 taken hostage in the October 7 attack.

“We are investigating Hersh's murder and every single brutal Hamas murder of Americans as an act of terrorism,” Garland said.

If convicted, the group faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

The charges were filed in February but were kept sealed until Tuesday in case the U.S. had the opportunity to arrest any of the defendants, an unnamed Justice Department official told CBS News, the BBC's U.S. partner.

Over the weekend, President Joe Biden condemned the killing of Goldberg-Polin by Hamas, calling it “as tragic as it is reprehensible.”

“Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Britain defended its decision to ban the sale of certain weapons to Israel, saying it feared those weapons could be used in the Gaza Strip.

On October 7, Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, more than 40,000 people have been killed since then in the ongoing Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

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