A previously convicted perpetrator of a deadly firebomb assault on a peaceful pro-Israel hostage advocacy gathering in Colorado has formally entered a guilty plea to federal hate crime counts, closing a key chapter in a case that stoked widespread alarm over rising antisemitic violence across the United States. The defendant, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, carried out the premeditated attack on 1 June 2025, targeting members of the Colorado chapter of Run for Their Lives, a community group that held weekly assemblies to demand the release of Israeli civilians abducted by Hamas during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Court filings show Soliman, an Egyptian national, spent a full year plotting the assault, consuming instructional content on explosive device manufacturing before traveling from his residence in Colorado Springs to the demonstration site in Boulder. As he hurled multiple Molotov cocktails into the unsuspecting crowd, witnesses reported he shouted the phrase “Free Palestine.” The fiery assault left 12 people with severe burn injuries, including 82-year-old Karen Diamond, who succumbed to her wounds three weeks after the attack. Diamond’s 84-year-old husband Lou sustained life-altering burns that required a month of specialized care in a hospital burn unit to recover. Soliman, who entered a guilty plea to 101 state-level charges including first-degree murder back in May, had already been handed a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole at the state level. He had initially pleaded not guilty to the parallel federal hate crime prosecution, before reversing his plea in recent court proceedings. Citing statements Soliman provided to law enforcement immediately after his arrest, prosecutors confirmed the defendant explicitly stated his goal was to “kill all Zionist people” during the assault. Immigration records reviewed by CBS, the BBC’s U.S. media partner, confirm Soliman entered the U.S. in 2022 on a temporary non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023, leaving him in the country in an undocumented status at the time of the attack. Federal prosecutors have indicated they will seek an additional 50-year prison term to run consecutively with Soliman’s existing life sentence, for a combined total of life plus 50 years behind bars. His formal federal sentencing hearing is scheduled to take place in January of the following year. The high-profile firebombing took place in the immediate aftermath of a separate fatal shooting outside a Jewish community center in Washington D.C., amplifying widespread public and law enforcement concerns that antisemitic violent extremism was escalating as spillover tensions from the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict continued to ripple across American communities.
Man pleads guilty to federal hate crimes charges over fatal Colorado firebombing
