Man pleads guilty to federal hate crimes charges over fatal Colorado firebombing
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who is already serving a life sentence over the fatal 2025 attack, changed his plea in the federal case on Thursday.
Man admits federal hate crime charges in deadly Colorado firebombing
A man who had already been convicted of firebombing a group of protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Colorado has now pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges.
Prosecutors said Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw Molotov cocktails at the demonstrators in June 2025, injuring at least 12 people, one of whom later died.
He pleaded guilty in May to 101 state charges, including first-degree murder, which led to a life sentence, but he had initially pleaded not guilty in the federal case.
According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, prosecutors are seeking a sentence of life in prison plus 50 years on the federal charges.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in January.
Authorities said Soliman spent a year planning the attack, watching videos about explosives before driving from his home in Colorado Springs to the protest in Boulder.
As he threw the Molotov cocktails at the crowd on 1 June, 2025, he shouted “Free Palestine”. The group were members of Run for Their Lives in Colorado, which gathered weekly to support the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during the 7 October attacks.
Karen Diamond, 82, died from injuries from the attack three weeks later. Her family said her husband, Lou, was also badly burned and had to spend a month recovering in a hospital burn unit.
Soliman, an Egyptian national, told police after his arrest that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people”, according to court documents.
CBS reported that he entered California in 2022 on a non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023.
The firebombing heightened fears about antisemitic violence in the US, coming soon after a fatal shooting outside a Jewish centre in Washington DC.