Suspect in Colorado firebombing attack pleads guilty

BOULDER, Colo. — A man pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder and dozens of other charges after firebombing a group of demonstrators voicing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 46, faces life in prison without parole and an additional 400 years over the June 1 attack in Colorado that killed one person and injured a dozen, his attorneys wrote in a motion filed in a separate federal case. He pleaded guilty during an appearance in Boulder County District Court on Thursday morning.

Soliman, an Egyptian citizen, is accused of hurling molotov cocktails while shouting “Free Palestine” on a peaceful weekly walk along a downtown pedestrian mall in this college town northwest of Denver. One participant, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, later died of her injuries, and others were seriously wounded.

Soliman, who prosecutors say told police he wanted “to kill all Zionist people,” had previously pleaded not guilty to more than 180 state charges and to federal hate-crime charges. The Justice Department is considering whether to pursue the death penalty or accept Soliman’s offer to plead guilty to the federal counts, his attorneys wrote in the motion filed Sunday.

In that motion, the attorneys sought to block the deportation of his ex-wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, arguing that their in-person testimony may be necessary for future court proceedings. The attorneys say the family members knew nothing about Soliman’s plans for the attack, which they wrote was “profoundly inconsistent with his prior conduct.”

The family arrived in the United States on tourist visas in 2022, and Soliman applied for asylum for them the following year. The government acknowledged the application and issued work permits to Soliman and El Gamal, his federal attorneys said in court documents.

Even so, federal officers took the family members — including children ages 5 to 18 — into custody two days after the assault and have since repeatedly sought to deport them.

El Gamal, who divorced Soliman this year, and the children were held in immigration detention in Texas for nearly 11 months, until a federal judge ordered their release in late April.

Two days after they arrived back in Colorado, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rearrested them and put them on a plane to a small airport in Michigan, from where they were flown to New Jersey en route to an unknown international destination, El Gamal’s attorneys said. The plane turned around and returned them to Colorado after two federal judges halted their removal.

“The United States Government has made its intentions abundantly clear: It will never give up its effort to deport Mr. Soliman’s ex-wife and children,” Soliman’s attorneys wrote this week.

Eric Lee, the family’s immigration attorney, has said that El Gamal, 42, suffered from a painful lump in her chest while in detention but was denied proper medical care. She and her children, Lee said in a statement Monday, “are presently recuperating from this experience and from the immense trauma they have suffered for the last year.”