By Keith Coffman and Steve Gorman
DENVER, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The man who lobbed gasoline bombs at a pro-Israel rally last year in Colorado, setting fire to several people including a woman who later died from her burns, pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal hate-crime charges, the Associated Press reported.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, an Egyptian national, is already serving a life prison term for his guilty plea in May to more than 100 state charges, including first-degree murder.
Soliman pleaded guilty
to nine counts of hate-crime offenses and three explosives charges in federal court in Denver on Thursday. The charges are punishable by life in prison after federal prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty, the AP reported.
Soliman has admitted tossing two Molotov cocktails at people taking part in a peaceful rally in downtown Boulder on June 1, 2025, staged to express solidarity with hostages seized by Hamas militants who stormed into Israeli villages from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Prosecutors said Soliman also used a makeshift blowtorch fashioned from a spray bottle during his attack. He yelled "Free Palestine" as the gasoline bombs he lobbed at the crowd burst into flames outside a municipal courthouse in the heart of Boulder's popular Pearl Street shopping district.
Soliman had disguised himself as a gardener as he approached the rally and had carried a crate containing 16 more gasoline bombs that went unused, according to prosecutors.
'ENEMY IS ZIONISM'
Authorities in Colorado identified 29 victims, including 14 who were burned or injured while fleeing, and 15 who were close enough to be considered targets of attempted murder. One victim, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, died of her injuries later that month. Her husband suffered severe burns and survived.
The firebombing came amid heightened tensions over the 2023 Hamas raid and Israel's war of retaliation in Gaza, which sparked a surge in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the US and a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that many Israel supporters branded as antisemitic.
Admitting his guilt in state court nearly six months ago, Soliman denounced his own crimes as contrary to "the teachings of Islam" and said he bore no ill will toward Jewish people. He went on to lament the "thousands of families who have lost their families in Palestine and Gaza," and said the "enemy is Zionism."
A public defender who spoke on Soliman's behalf before he addressed the court in May said her client "felt overwhelmed for the suffering of the world and acted on that impulse."
According to affidavits filed in court by prosecutors, Soliman told investigators after his arrest that he wanted to "kill all Zionist people" and had planned his attack for a year, but delayed going through with it until after his daughter had graduated from high school.
Soliman, who lived with his wife and five children in Colorado Springs before his rampage, also has asserted that his family members were unaware of his intentions.
The family was taken into immigration custody in June 2025 after his arrest and transported to a detention facility in Texas. They were held until a court-ordered release on April 23, 2026, more than 10 months later.
The children and their mother, who subsequently divorced Soliman, were re-arrested on April 25 of this year just after returning to Colorado. They were freed again when attorneys intervened a day later, according to court documents.
Court records entered at about the time that Soliman reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors earlier this month showed that he had withdrawn motions seeking to preclude any further attempts at removing his family.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; additional reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Donna Bryson and Sanjeev Miglani)
