BOULDER, Colo. — A judge sentenced a man to life in prison without the possibility of parole Thursday after he pleaded guilty to killing one person and injuring a dozen others in a 2025 firebombing attack on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Speaking to the court through an interpreter, Mohamed Sabry Soliman apologized to the victims and expressed regret for the attack last June as not in line with Islamic teaching.
Yet Soliman, an Egyptian national who federal authorities say was living in the U.S. illegally, targeted the victims because they were Jewish, Boulder County District Judge Nancy Salomone pointed out before sentencing him.
“You chose a time and a place and a set of circumstances and weapons that were designed to inflict the most pain that you could,” Salomone said.
Besides life in prison, Soliman’s sentence includes hundreds of years for dozens of charges including attempted murder, assault and attempted assault.
The June 1 attack rattled Boulder, a scenic city of 100,000 people near the mountains northwest of Denver.
Posing as a gardener, Soliman attacked the demonstrators on Pearl Street, a quaint downtown pedestrian mall lined with shops and restaurants. Jewish community members had been demonstrating there weekly in support of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023.
Yelling “Free Palestine,” Soliman lit and threw two Molotov cocktails out of 18 he’d brought in a box. The bursting bottles filled with gasoline badly burned Karen Diamond, 82, and injured a dozen others.
Diamond died three weeks later after what her sons in a statement called “indescribable pain.”
Soliman still faces federal hate crimes charges. He has pleaded not guilty while prosecutors in that case weigh whether to seek the death penalty.
The attack could have been even worse, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told the court before the sentencing. Soliman tried twice to buy a gun and was denied, Dougherty said. So he “decided to set them on fire” in what Dougherty called a “cowardly” crime.
Soliman entered the U.S. in August 2022 on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023. He filed for asylum and was granted a work authorization in March 2023, but that also expired, federal authorities said.
He worked a series of low-paying jobs. At the time of the attack, Soliman was living with his wife and their five children in an apartment in Colorado Springs.
Federal authorities alleged Soliman planned the attack for a year, and an FBI affidavit said Soliman told police after his arrest that he sought “to kill all Zionist people,” a reference to the movement to establish and protect a Jewish state in Israel.
Soliman said in court that he respected Jewish people he has known, but questioned the deaths of innocent people in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
“Yes, I am against Israel and I can’t deny that. And that is my right,” Soliman said.
Soliman’s federal defense lawyers argue he should not have been charged with hate crimes because he was motivated by opposition to Zionism. An attack motivated by someone’s political views is not considered a hate crime under federal law.
State prosecutors identified 29 victims in the attack. Thirteen were physically injured. The others were considered victims because they could have been hurt. A dog was also injured in the attack, and Soliman was charged with animal cruelty.
Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their children spent 10 months in immigration detention until April, when a federal judge in Texas ordered their release. The couple divorced in April.
An immigration appeals court had dismissed their case to stay in the U.S. and issued a deportation order. But U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio allowed their release on the condition that El Gamal and her oldest child, who is 18, wear electronic monitoring.
Soliman’s attorneys seek to block the family’s deportation until a judge determines they won’t need to be present for court proceedings in his federal case.
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Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this story.
