Boulder, Colorado
A man was sentenced to life in prison with out the potential for parole after pleading guilty Thursday to killing one particular person and injuring a dozen others in a 2025 firebombing assault on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in help of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman seemed down at a desk all through the sentencing. He has in the meantime pleaded not responsible to federal hate crime costs for the assault final June. Prosecutors are weighing whether or not to search the demise penalty in the federal case, in accordance to his attorneys.
Authorities say Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails at demonstrators at a pedestrian mall in downtown Boulder, a metropolis of 100,000 folks northwest of Denver that’s house to the University of Colorado.
Karen Diamond, 82, was injured in the assault and later died. A dozen others have been additionally injured.
Soliman is an Egyptian nationwide who federal authorities say was residing in the U.S. illegally. Investigators allege he deliberate the assault for a yr and was pushed by a need “to kill all Zionist people.”
Speaking to the court docket by way of an interpreter for almost a half hour, Soliman supplied apologies to the victims and condolences for Diamond’s demise. “There are no words that can express my sadness for her passing,” Soliman mentioned.
He mentioned he wasn’t asking for leniency at sentencing for his convictions in state court docket and needs prosecutors urgent federal hate crime costs towards him to search the demise penalty.
“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman mentioned. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”
In a assertion learn in court docket by a prosecutor, Diamond’s sons requested that Soliman not be allowed to see his household once more “since he is responsible for our mother never seeing her family again.”
Andrew and Ethan Diamond mentioned their mom suffered “indescribable pain” for over three weeks earlier than her demise. “In those weeks, we learned the full meaning of the expressions ‘living hell’ and ‘fate worse than death,’” Diamond’s sons mentioned in the assertion.
In one other assertion learn by a prosecutor, a doctor who was a sufferer of the assault described the helplessness of seeing Diamond struggling and realizing that she wouldn’t survive.
Boulder Mayor Pro Tem Tara Winer mentioned the victims included a few of her shut pals.
“It was a horrific attack,” Winer mentioned by electronic mail this week. “Their lives were changed forever.”
Soliman’s attorneys revealed he would plead guilty in a Sunday court docket submitting in a associated federal case.
Soliman’s federal attorneys have mentioned in court docket filings the assault “was profoundly inconsistent” with Soliman’s prior conduct and “came as a total shock to his family.”
At the time of the assault, Soliman had been residing along with his household in a two-bedroom residence in Colorado Springs — about 97 miles away. He had moved to the U.S. from Kuwait in 2022 along with his spouse and their 5 youngsters and labored in a collection of low-paying jobs.
The couple divorced in April.
Investigators allege Soliman informed them he meant to kill the roughly 20 members on the weekly demonstration at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall. He threw two of greater than two dozen Molotov cocktails he had with him whereas yelling, “Free Palestine!”
Police mentioned he informed them he acquired scared as a result of he had by no means harm anybody earlier than.
Federal prosecutors allege the victims have been focused due to their perceived or precise connection to Israel. Soliman’s federal protection legal professionals argue he mustn’t have been charged with hate crimes as a result of he was motivated by opposition to Zionism, the political motion to set up and maintain a Jewish state in Israel.
An assault motivated by somebody’s political beliefs is not thought-about a hate crime beneath federal regulation.
State prosecutors have recognized 29 victims in the assault. Thirteen have been bodily injured. The others have been close by and thought of victims as a result of they may have been harm. A canine was additionally injured in the assault, and Soliman was charged with animal cruelty.
Soliman’s spouse, Hayam El Gamal, and their youngsters spent 10 months in immigration detention till a federal choose in Texas ordered their launch in April.
An immigration appeals court docket had dismissed their case to keep in the U.S. and issued a deportation order. But U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio allowed their launch on the situation that El Gamal and her oldest youngster, who is 18, put on digital monitoring.
Soliman’s attorneys search to block the household’s deportation till a choose determines they received’t want to be current for court docket proceedings in his federal case.