BOULDER, Colo. — A man who firebombed a group of demonstrators voicing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza last summer pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder and dozens of other state charges.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, was sentenced by a Colorado district court judge to life in prison without parole and an additional 2,128 years for planning and executing the June 1 attack, which killed one person and injured a dozen. He pleaded guilty to all 101 state charges against him, most of which the judge read one by one. Soliman still faces trial in a separate federal case.
Soliman, an Egyptian citizen, hurled two molotov cocktails while shouting “Free Palestine” at a group that was on a peaceful weekly walk along a downtown pedestrian mall in this college town northwest of Denver. One participant, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, later died of her injuries, and others were seriously wounded. But the extensive charges related to 29 victims who were present, as well as a dog that died of severe burns.
“Each victim deserves justice, and that’s what happened in court today,” Michael Dougherty, the county district attorney, said after the hearing. He called the attack “an antisemitic act of terror and hate.”
Soliman, who prosecutors say told police he wanted “to kill all Zionist people,” had previously pleaded not guilty to both the state charges and the federal hate-crime charges. The Justice Department is considering whether to pursue the death penalty or accept Soliman’s offer to plead guilty to the federal counts, his attorneys wrote in a motion filed Sunday.
Several victims of the attack spoke in court or submitted statements that were read by Dougherty. They talked of meeting on a beautiful summer day for a walk that some had participated in weekly for more than a year, and others — such as Diamond — had joined for the first time. But as soon as Soliman, who disguised himself as a gardener carrying a weed-sprayer that he had filled with gasoline, launched his assault, the peacefulness of Boulder’s Pearl Street was destroyed, several said. They described living in fear since then — of crowds, of displaying their Jewish faith, of returning to the street.
“Pearl Street is now a place where I struggle to hold back tears,” said Orrie Gartner, who was at the march with his wife and parents. “I want to trust people.”
“Our parents’ suffering is an utterly senseless tragedy,” Diamond’s sons said in a statement that was read aloud. Their father was injured, and the burns their mother suffered before her death, they said, had taught them the meaning of the phrases “living hell and fate worse than death.”
Soliman, who appeared in a striped prison uniform and shackles, also spoke at length and addressed several of the victims by name. He began by apologizing and asking Judge Nancy W. Salomone to impose the maximum sentence, adding that he hoped to be sentenced to death in the federal case. He said his actions did not align with the teachings of Islam, and he insisted he did not hate Jews.
But Soliman’s contrition ended when he began speaking of Palestinians who had been killed during Israel’s war in Gaza, which it launched after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants.
“Yes, I am against Israel, and I can’t deny that,” he said. “And that’s my right.”
Soliman insisted his ex-wife and five children, who lived with him in Colorado Springs at the time of the attack, knew nothing of his plans.
In a motion filed Sunday, Soliman’s attorneys in the federal case sought to block the deportation of his ex-wife, Hayam El Gamal, and the children, arguing that their in-person testimony may be necessary for future court proceedings.
The family arrived in the United States on tourist visas in 2022, and Soliman applied for asylum for them the following year. The government acknowledged the application and issued work permits to Soliman and El Gamal, his federal attorneys said in court documents.
Even so, federal officers took the family members — including children ages 5 to 18 — into custody two days after the assault and have since repeatedly sought to deport them.
El Gamal, who divorced Soliman this year, and the children were held in immigration detention in Texas for nearly 11 months, until a federal judge ordered their release in late April.
Two days after they arrived back in Colorado, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rearrested them and put them on a plane to a small airport in Michigan, from where they were flown to New Jersey en route to an unknown international destination, El Gamal’s attorneys said. The plane turned around and returned them to Colorado after two federal judges halted their removal.
“The United States Government has made its intentions abundantly clear: It will never give up its effort to deport Mr. Soliman’s ex-wife and children,” Soliman’s attorneys wrote this week.
Eric Lee, the family’s immigration attorney, has said that El Gamal, 42, suffered from a painful lump in her chest while in detention but was denied proper medical care. She and her children, Lee said in a statement Monday, “are presently recuperating from this experience and from the immense trauma they have suffered for the last year.”
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