A judge sentenced Mohamed Sabry Soliman to life in prison for a deadly attack last year. The Egyptian national U.S. officials say was living illegally in the U.S. was sentenced after throwing two Molotov cocktails at protesters and calling for Hamas to release Israeli hostages in Boulder in the summer of 2025.
“The court finds your choices were acts of terror and they victimized an entire community, and they made everyone in it feel unsafe,” Boulder County District Judge Nancy Salomone told Soliman, according to The Colorado Sun. She gave the maximum penalty for each of the 101 charges he faced. He will have no opportunity for parole.
Soliman, 46, pleaded guilty on Thursday to killing 82-year-old Karen Diamond in the attack and injuring dozens of others. The Associated Press reported that Soliman looked down at his desk while the judge and others spoke. He did, however, apologize to victims of the attack and acknowledged Diamond’s death. Her sons described it as a “fate worse than death,” saying she suffered “indescribable pain” for three weeks after the attack before she died. “There are no words that can express my sadness for her passing,” he said.
Separately, he pleaded not guilty to 12 federal hate crime charges. His attorneys claim that prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, available at the federal level, for those charges. Investigators allege Soliman planned the attack for over a year and wanted “to kill all Zionist people.”
Prosecutors claim he hoped to kill 20 participants in the weekly protest at the city’s Pearl Street Mall, an outdoor space, which was organized after Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” when throwing the firebombs. State prosecutors have identified 29 victims, 13 of whom attended the attack and others being in the vicinity. Soliman was charged with animal cruelty, too, as a dog was injured in the attack.
“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman told the court. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.” The New York Times reports that he also said he believed he deserved the death penalty for his actions. (Colorado does not have the death penalty.)
Soliman’s lawyers say his acts weren’t driven by antisemitism but a hatred for Zionism. “Yes, I am against Israel, and I can’t deny that,” he said. “And that’s my right.”
Soliman moved to the United States from Kuwait with his wife and five children. He was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs, 97 miles from Boulder, at the time of the attack. His wife and children spent 10 months in immigration detention after the attack before their release in April. Although he and his wife are now divorced, his lawyers want the family to stay in the United States until a judge rules whether or not they’d be needed in a trial.