Colorado sentences firebomber to life in prison for killing woman at rally for hostages
A man is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty 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 held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman looks 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 US 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 offers apologies to the victims and condolences for Diamond’s death. “There are no words that can express my sadness for her passing,” Soliman says.
He says he isn’t asking for leniency at sentencing for his convictions in state court and wants prosecutors pressing federal hate crime charges against him not 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 says. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”
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.”