The feds aren’t pursuing the death penalty against the first person in the US to be accused of participating in Oct. 7 likely because it would be too difficult to tie him to any specific death, an expert told The Post.
Mahmoud Amin Ya-Qub Al-Muhtadi, a 33-year-old accused Hamas-linked terrorist, was arrested in Louisiana earlier this month for allegedly partaking in the Hamas terrorists’ atrocities on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, specifically by rallying men and weapons and taking part in an ambush on Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
The Kfar Aza attacks resulted in the murder of 60 people — including four Americans — and the kidnapping of 19, with a US citizen among them, according to criminal-court papers.
He was charged in a two-count indictment with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization resulting in death and with one charge of visa fraud for allegedly lying on papers denying his connection to Hamas when he applied to come to the US.
The suspect, who US Attorney General Pam Bondi called “a monster,” pleaded not guilty.
During a hearing in Lafayette federal court in Louisiana on Monday, Assistant US Attorney John Nickel said his office would not seek capital punishment against Al-Muhtadi, according to a report by the Baton Rouge Advocate.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told The Post the move is likely a strategic and resource-driven one that the Lafayette US attorney’s office made because of how hard it would be to tie Al-Muhtadi to any one specific death — given the evidence and witnesses are in Israel, which is at war.
To make a bid for the death penalty, “prosecutors have to directly tie that support [for Hamas] to a death,” Rahmani said.
“I’m not saying they can’t do it, but it’s challenging with a case like this where most of the witnesses and evidence are in another county, in a war zone,” the lawyer said.
He explained that death-penalty cases require two trials: one to determine guilt and another to decide the penalty. And death-penalty cases must be appealed if they result in conviction — all of which uses up a lot of time and resources.
“You can’t pursue them all,” Rahmani said of federal prosecutors seeking the death penalty. “And you want to pursue those that are a sure thing.”
Al-Muhtadi could still face life in prison if he’s found guilty, since the charge of providing material support to a terrorism organization has been upgraded to providing material support to a terrorism organization resulting in death, Rahmani explained.
Al-Muhtadi, who lived in Gaza at the time, got his men together the morning of the attacks and giddily talked in phone calls about how the offensive would spark “a third world war,” prosecutors claimed.
Al-Muhtadi led youths in the National Resistance Brigades, a military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In a series of calls leading up to the assault on the Kibbutz, Al-Muhtadi can be heard instructing his men to join him, gather weapons and bullet-proof vests and meet him to head into Israel, the feds alleged.
Cell-phone data placed him in the area of Kfar Aza by 10:01 a.m., just a few hours after the Oct. 7 slaughter began, prosecutors claimed.
On a 8:42 a.m. call with another man, Al-Muhtadi said, “There is lots of [Israel Defense Force soldiers] that have been kidnapped.
“It’s a game, which will be a good one,” the suspect allegedly said.
“If things go the way they should, Syria will take part, Lebanon will take part, … It’s going to be a third world war … it will be a war of attritions. That will be perfect,” Al-Muhtadi said during the call, according to the complaint.
Less than a year after the invasion, Al-Muhtadi applied for a US visa, falsely claiming he never murdered anyone, he never engaged in terrorism and wasn’t apart of such an organization, the feds claimed.
He first moved to Tulsa, Okla., on Sept. 12, 2024, and was eventually tracked down by US authorities in Lafayette in June 2025.
Al-Muhtadi’s arrest was the first one in the US of a person accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Aaron Adams, the suspect’s lawyer with the Federal Public Defenders, told The Post his client is presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial and blasted Bondi for her public statements about the accused.
“In the American criminal legal system, all accused are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” Adams said in the statement. “In calling Mahmoud Al-Muhtadi a ‘monster,’ Attorney General Pamela Bondi seems to have forgotten this fundamental principle.
“We must bear in mind that no evidence has yet been presented in a court of law supporting the government’s allegations. We look forward to addressing those allegations in court,” the lawyer said.
Bondi issued a statement Oct. 17 announcing the charges against Al-Muhtadi, who had been arrested a day earlier.
“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,” Bondi said at the time.
The Department of Justice did not immediately return a Post request for comment Tuesday.
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