(The Center Square) — A Lafayette resident accused of participating in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel will be detained until his trial next November, according to court records.
A jury trial for Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi is set for Nov. 2, 2026 in Lafayette before U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Al-Muhtadi was indicted in October on one count of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of fraudulently applying for a U.S. visa. He has pleaded not guilty to both.
His name does not appear in an online search of state or federal prison inmates, and a message left with his attorney was not immediately returned.
According to an FBI criminal complaint, Al-Muhtadi armed himself and joined a group that crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel to fight alongside Hamas in the attack that killed 1,200 people. Another 250 were taken as hostages.
In the year following the attack, Al-Muhtadi applied for a U.S. visa and said he planned to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma and look for work in the auto repair or food service industries, according to the complaint. Prosecutors say he lied on his visa application, hiding his ties to armed groups and his role in the Oct. 7 attack. Department of Homeland Security records show he arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 12, 2024 and has since lived and worked in Lafayette.
The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism Section, which leads investigations and prosecutions of domestic and international terrorism, material-support and terrorist-financing offenses.
On Nov. 6, Judge Joseph certified the matter as both classified and “complex,” and agreed to prosecutors’ request to extend a 70-day deadline for trial.
One provision requires the government to identify an “Israeli document authentication witness” by May 1, 2026, with a June 15 hearing focused on authenticating Israeli battlefield documents.
There is an extradition treaty between the United States and Israel, but the Justice Department did not respond to questions about whether extradition is being sought.
