An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

US federal prosecutors have accused a Palestinian man from Gaza who has been residing in Louisiana of taking part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

The Justice Department announced on Friday that Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi, 33, who had been living in Lafayette, Louisiana, after entering the US illegally, was arrested and charged with visa fraud and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court on Thursday, Al-Muhtadi was an operative for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a terrorist group that collaborated with Hamas during the Oct. 7 assault. Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence during their rampage through southern Israeli communities.

US prosecutors allege that Al-Muhtadi took up arms, galvanized recruits, and invaded Israel from Gaza shortly after Hamas fighters breached the border.

Phone records cited by federal authorities place him near Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the Israeli communities devastated during the attacks.

After the massacre, prosecutors say, Al-Muhtadi secured a visa to enter the United States in June 2024 and allegedly misled authorities on his application by denying any connection to terrorist organizations or participation in the Oct. 7 operation. He entered the United States in September 2024 and lived in Lafayette before being apprehended.

“After hiding out in the United States, this monster has been found and charged with participating in the atrocities of Oct. 7 — the single deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “While nothing can fully heal the scars left by Hamas’s brutal attack, this department’s Joint Task Force October 7 is dedicated to finding and prosecuting those responsible for that horrific day, including the murder of dozens of American citizens.”

The investigation was led by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and a special interagency unit known as Joint Task Force 10-7, created earlier this year to investigate threats and crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks. American citizens were among those both killed and taken hostage.

The DFLP was previously designated by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization but was later removed after its activity declined. The group has recently reemerged in Gaza, fighting alongside Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israeli forces.

If convicted, Al-Muhtadi faces up to 25 years in federal prison.

The Trump administration has moved to tighten the US visa system amid concerns about extremist infiltration. Officials have expanded vetting to include detailed reviews of applicants’ online activity and potential ties to antisemitic or anti-American movements.

A Palestinian man in Louisiana was arrested Thursday after federal prosecutors accused him of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi, 33, a Palestinian resident of Lafayette, Louisiana, is accused of being an operative for the National Resistance Brigades, a Gaza-based paramilitary group that took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.

“After hiding out in the United States, this monster has been found and charged with participating in the atrocities of October 7 — the single deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

The government’s case against Al-Muhtadi appears to represent the first arrest on U.S. soil of anyone alleged to have participated in the deadly 2023 attack, in which 1,200 people in Israel, most civilians, were killed and 251 people were taken hostage.

On that day, after Al-Muhtadi learned of the attacks, he allegedly “armed himself, recruited additional marauders, and then entered Israel,” according to a statement by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg.

According to transcripts of cell phone calls Al-Muhtadi allegedly made that morning, he told another man to “get ready” and that “the borders are open,” and later requested a “full magazine.”

Al-Muhtadi’s phone also used a cell tower located near Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Israel, where at least 62 residents were killed and 19 were taken hostage during the attacks, according to court documents.

He entered the United States on Sept. 12, 2024, after allegedly providing false information on his U.S. visa application to immigration authorities, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

A criminal complaint against Al-Muhtadi was filed on Oct. 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, on the eve of the second anniversary of the attack. He was charged with providing, attempting to provide or conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization as well as visa fraud, according to the criminal complaint.

The arrest comes as the U.S. government seeks legal redress against those who perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which included U.S. citizens among the victims. In September 2024, the Justice Department also filed charges against six Hamas officials, including Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar shortly before he was killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

Bondi established the Joint Task Force October 7, which the Justice Department is calling JTF 10-7, in February 2025 to investigate the attacks. The task force discovered Al-Muhtadi’s presence in the United States, according to the Justice Department’s press release, and JTF 10-7 and the FBI New Orleans Field Office are now investigating the case along with Israeli authorities.

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L-R: Former Operations Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, former Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, and Gaza Division chief Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram stand over the body of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Oct. 17, 2024. The image was published by the army on Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: IDF.

Law enforcement in Athens on Thursday restricted pro-Hamas activists from staging demonstrations in the Greek capital to memorialize Yahya Sinwar — the architect behind Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel — who was killed on Oct. 16, 2024, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Police stated that the planned events presented safety concerns and a significant risk. Organizers reportedly included Gather for Gaza, Stand with Palestine, and the Turkish People’s Front. The ban ran from 5:00 pm on Thursday through 6:00 am on Friday. It covered the city’s Syntagma Square and the inner-city area.

The IDF commemorated the anniversary of Sinwar’s killing by releasing a new image of the terrorist mastermind’s body. It features former Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, former Operations Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, and Gaza Division chief Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram standing above the Hamas leader’s corpse on Oct. 17, 2024.

The IDF posted on X on Thursday, “One year since Yahya Sinwar’s elimination. The man who began the war isn’t alive to see it end.”

On Oct. 11, The New York Times reported the discovery of an August 2022 handwritten memo by Sinwar seen as a planning document for the following year’s Oct. 7 attack, instructing “Two or three operations, in which an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared.”

On Tuesday, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published further translations from the document its author had titled “Necessary Clarifications.”

Sinwar used the religious language “In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” and “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.” He described eight key points which MEMRI characterized as developing pre-stage preparations, using psychological warfare through imagery, deploying “horrifying events,” opening “gates” for infiltration, facilitating a flow of forces, coordinating with other factions, designating identification signals, and expanding the offensive.

Before the attack, Sinwar told his fighters to “engage in intensive movements weeks before any action that the enemy deems routine, providing cover for the larger movement.”

Sinwar also directed the use of creating terrifying media both to horrify Israelis and to inspire Palestinians. He wrote that he wanted both “images that spark feelings of euphoria, madness, and excitement among our people” while also fueling “terror and panic among the enemy.”

Sinwar instructed that he wanted Hamas fighters to engage in “trampling on the heads of soldiers and shooting them at point-blank range, slaughtering some with knives, blowing up tanks, and capturing prisoners kneeling with their hands on their heads.” He called for his followers to “deliberately create these events, film them, and broadcast the images as quickly as possible.”

The document continued to mix both calls for carnage with theological references. Sinwar cited the Quranic verse “So Allah came to them from where they did not expect and cast terror into their hearts” in the context of creating “flaming car bombs exploding in a location or building, causing terrifying destruction, a heart-rending sound, and a massive fire.”

Sinwar also named what he called “gates” as the entry to attack, identifying “one in the north (Erez Gate), one east of Gaza (Nahal Oz), and a third opposite the central one.” He called for bulldozers to first “advance to open the gates, remove obstacles, and level the roads” and then after the attack had begun to take out “all possible wire, barriers, barricades, earthworks, and the like.”

Foreseeing where he would direct his forces, Sinwar wrote that “the Northern Brigade’s objectives must be primarily directed toward the coastal strip, the Gaza Brigade’s objectives toward the northeast … the Rafah Brigade toward the southeast.” He also planned coordinating with other factions, instructing that brigade commanders should contact leaders of other groups to “muster their forces as quickly as possible to integrate them into the operational plan” which would involve the third and fourth waves of the attack.

Sinwar also suggested signals to avoid friendly fire, such as “a specific ribbon on [the] right arm” and with a codename like “The Jerusalem Army.”

The document captured Sinwar’s optimism at the potential for the strikes to grow. He called for his commanders to “expand the attack to the greatest possible extent” and to anticipate support from “movements of our people inside Israel, in Jerusalem, and the West Bank, and [the Lebanese terrorist group] Hezbollah’s intervention.”

Sinwar sought to capture “centers of power, command, and control” and aimed “to impose the most significant facts on the ground, making the possibility of a counterattack impossible.”