By Keith Coffman and Steve Gorman
DENVER, Oct 29 (Reuters) – The man accused of throwing gasoline bombs at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado last year, injuring several people including a woman who later died, pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal hate-crime charges, according to media reports.
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, according to the Denver Post. The charges are punishable by life in prison after federal prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty.
The plea deal asks that Soliman be sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years, prosecutor Melissa Hindman said during the hearing, the Post reported. Soliman will be sentenced on January 7, Colorado Public Radio reported.
Soliman has admitted tossing two Molotov cocktails at people taking part in a rally in downtown Boulder on June 1, 2025 held in solidarity with hostages seized by Hamas militants who stormed Israeli villages from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza on October 7, 2023.
In the plea deal, Soliman admitted targeting the demonstrators because of their real or perceived religion or national origin. Handcuffed and shackled, Soliman calmly answered Senior Judge John Kane’s questions through a translator during the roughly hour-long hearing, the Post reported.
DISGUISED AS GARDENER
Prosecutors said Soliman 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.
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 insisted 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.”
According to affidavits filed in court by prosecutors, Soliman told investigators after his arrest that he had planned his attack for a year, but delayed going through with it until after his daughter had graduated from high school.
Soliman, who had lived with his wife and five children in Colorado Springs, also has asserted that his family members were unaware of his intentions beforehand.
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)
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