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TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON, DC —Families of Americans killed and injured in Hamas' October 7 terror attack in Israel are contemplating a lawsuit against North Korea for indirectly supplying the Palestinian militant group with weapons, according to an Israeli attorney representing the families.
Weapons that Hamas used in its surprise attack on Israel were provided by North Korea "knowingly and intentionally," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli attorney and human rights activist who spoke with VOA's Korean Service in Tel Aviv on December 27.
"North Korea knows its weapons go to Iran, and Iran gives the weapons to Hamas," Darshan-Leitner continued, adding that Pyongyang "never once warned Iran not to send the weapons to Hamas."
This makes North Korea "liable," she said, explaining that she and her legal associates are considering filing a lawsuit in U.S. court against those countries that supported Hamas, such as Iran and North Korea, on behalf of American victims of the October 7 attack and their families.
More than 30 Americans, many of them dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, were killed in the attack that initiated the latest round of violence between Hamas and Israel.
Darshan-Leitner is representing 10 Americans, including family members who lost their loved ones, as well as U.S. citizens who were injured or who incurred property damage in the attack.
VOA's Korean Service contacted the North Korean mission to the U.N. seeking a response to a possible lawsuit against the regime by the American victims of the Hamas attack, but it did not respond.
The attorney said she expects more U.S. victims to join the suit, including hostages seized in October if they return safely.
"The burden is on us, the plaintiffs, to prove the case," Darshan-Leitner said. "We are using experts who know a lot about North Korea, know how North Korean weapons wound up in the hands of Hamas."
North Korean weapons have been found in Israel and Gaza since the attack on October 7. An Israeli military official said during a media tour in October that about 10% of the Hamas weapons recovered after the attack were made in North Korea.
Lieutenant Colonel Idan Sharon-Kettler, deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) enemy equipment collection unit, told VOA's Korean Service on December 28 in Tzrifin, Israel, that Hamas modified North Korea's rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) to make them more powerful.
"We see supplies coming from different countries, among them, North Korea," said Sharon-Kettler at an IDF facility where recovered weapons were displayed.
"The rockets that we find, even the ones that are produced inside Gaza or the ones that are produced in Iran - all of the RPG-7s, for example - are using parts that come from North Korea," said Sharon-Kettler.
He said the rockets were assembled with North Korean rocket engines, which give them capabilities to "penetrate heavy armor" and cause greater damage.
Darshan-Leiter said the rockets give Hamas the ability to attack civilians without being inside Israel.
"Once Israel built a fence around Gaza, Hamas terrorists can no longer go into Israel and carry out attacks inside," she said. Before Hamas breached the border fence on October 7, "the only way that Hamas could kill Israeli people is by these rockets."
Normally, foreign states are immune from being sued in a U.S. court under the Foreign Service Immunities Act, unless an exception applies. But if a foreign state is listed as a state-sponsored terrorist group, U.S. citizens can bring a lawsuit against that country.
In November 2017, North Korea was redesignated as a state sponsor of terrorism after being taken off the list in 2008. It was first designated in 1988 for blowing up a Korean Airline passenger flight in mid-air the previous year, killing all 115 people aboard.
North Korea was sued a number of times over the past several years. The most notable was a suit brought against the regime by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American student who in 2017 died shortly after returning to the U.S. in a vegetative state following detention in North Korea.
A judge from a D.C. federal court ruled in 2018 that Cindy and Fred Warmbier were entitled to $500 million in damages from North Korea.
In October, a federal court in New York ordered the New York Mellon Bank to turn over to Cindy and Fred Warmbier approximately $2.2 million in frozen funds originally owned by a sanctioned Russian bank where North Korea's Air Koryo kept an account.
In another case, Americans who were injured and the family members of U.S. citizens killed in an attack at the Lod Airport in 1972 - now Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv - filed a complaint against North Korea in 2022.
According to court documents, they are seeking damages from North Korea for its role in sponsoring the attack.
The attack killed 26 people and injured 80 and was carried out by three members of the Japanese Red Army who were reportedly recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The U.S. designated the group as a terrorist organization in 1997 but revoked the designation in 2001 when the group disbanded.