BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty Thursday 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.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman looked down at a desk throughout the sentencing. He has meanwhile pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges for the attack last June. Prosecutors are weighing whether to seek the death penalty in the federal case, according to his attorneys.
Authorities say Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails at demonstrators at a pedestrian mall in downtown Boulder, a city of 100,000 people northwest of Denver that’s home to the University of Colorado.
Karen Diamond, 82, was injured in the attack and later died. A dozen others were also injured.
Soliman is an Egyptian national who federal authorities say was living in the U.S. illegally. Investigators allege he planned the attack for a year and was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.”
Speaking to the court through an interpreter for nearly a half hour, Soliman offered apologies to the victims and condolences for Diamond’s death. “There are no words that can express my sadness for her passing,” Soliman said.
He said he wasn’t asking for leniency at sentencing for his convictions in state court and wants prosecutors pressing federal hate crime charges against him to seek the death penalty.
“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman said. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”
District Attorney Michael Dougherty said Soliman’s guilty pleas don’t show an acceptance of responsibility but rather “a surrender to the strength of the evidence” against him. Despite Soliman’s claims he doesn’t hate people who practice the Jewish faith, Judge Nancy Salomone concluded Soliman targeted the victims because they were Jewish. “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,” the judge said.
In a statement read earlier in court by a prosecutor, Diamond’s sons asked that Soliman not be allowed to see his family again “since he is responsible for our mother never seeing her family again.”
Andrew and Ethan Diamond said their mother suffered “indescribable pain” for over three weeks before her death. “In those weeks, we learned the full meaning of the expressions ‘living hell’ and ‘fate worse than death,’” Diamond’s sons said in the statement.
Soliman’s federal attorneys have said in court filings the attack “was profoundly inconsistent” with Soliman’s prior conduct and “came as a total shock to his family.”
At the time of the attack, Soliman had been living with his family in a two-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs — about 97 miles (156 kilometers) away. He had moved to the U.S. from Kuwait in 2022 with his wife and their five children and worked in a series of low-paying jobs.
Investigators allege Soliman told them he intended to kill the roughly 20 participants at the weekly demonstration at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall. He threw two of more than two dozen Molotov cocktails he had with him while yelling, “Free Palestine!”
Police said he told them he got scared because he had never hurt anyone before.
Federal prosecutors allege the victims were targeted because of their perceived or actual connection to Israel. Soliman’s federal defense lawyers argue he should not have been charged with hate crimes because he was motivated by opposition to Zionism, the political movement to establish and sustain a Jewish state in Israel.
An attack motivated by someone’s political views is not considered a hate crime under federal law.
State prosecutors have identified 29 victims in the attack. Thirteen were physically injured. The others were nearby and 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 a federal judge in Texas ordered their release 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.