Oct. 7 survivors sue AP for hiring freelance photographers ‘embedded with Hamas terrorists’: lawsuit

Several survivors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel have accused the Associated Press in a new lawsuit of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization by using freelance photojournalists believed to be embedded with the violent militants.

The plaintiffs — Israeli-Americans and Americans who attended the Nova music festival raided by Hamas as well as loved ones of victims — are suing the news outlet for damages under the Antiterrorism Act, according to the federal complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida Wednesday night.

They are being represented by lawyers working with the nonprofit National Jewish Advocacy Center who accuse the major media company of “materially supporting terrorism” by paying alleged Hamas-associated photojournalists for images captured during and immediately after the Oct. 7 invasion.

“There is no doubt that AP’s photographers participated in the October 7th massacre, and that AP knew, or at the very least should have known, through simple due diligence, that the people they were paying were longstanding Hamas affiliates and full participants in the terrorist attack that they were also documenting,” the complaint alleges.

The suit mentions the names of four freelance photographers whose work was purchased and published by the AP and claims that the four are “known Hamas associates who were gleefully embedded with the Hamas terrorists during the October 7th attacks.”

But the majority of the complaint focuses on one photojournalist, Hassan Eslaiah — who has been accused of being a Hamas associate even before the terrorist groups’ bloody invasion of Israel.