Mohamed Soliman will spend the rest of his life in prison. All that’s left to determine is how long that life will be.
If he gets his way, it may be short.
Soliman, 46, pleaded guilty Thursday to more than 100 state charges with sentence enhancers from his firebomb attack on a group of peaceful demonstrators in Boulder last June 1. That included first-degree murder with extreme indifference in the killing of Karen Diamond, 82, a still-active athlete who died weeks later from the burns and injuries she suffered in the attack.
After hearing from several victims of the attack and those who read statements on behalf of victims, Boulder District Chief Judge Nancy W. Salomone issued the mandatory life sentence without parole to Soliman, and the maximum possible sentences on all the dozens of other crimes, adding up to life plus 2,128 years – to be served consecutively.
Soliman largely listened impassively through headphones to an Arabic translation of the victims’ testimony and the written statements. Clad in an orange-and-white striped jail uniform, he sat at the defense table with his head down, at times writing on a pad between his attorneys. He showed no emotion as the sentence was announced.
“Mr. Soliman, the court finds that you chose to victimize people who were peacefully gathering together. And the act of peaceful gathering is the most fundamental, or one of the most fundamental and sacred rights that a government and a community can afford to its citizens,” Salomone said. “You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community. … You chose to victimize the elderly, to victimize children, to victimize people that were gathered in peace to grieve together and to heal together and to help together.
“You chose a time and a place and a set of circumstances and weapons that were designed to inflict the most pain that you could and that you indeed did inflict the most pain and fear that anyone possibly could. The court finds that your choices were acts of terror, and that they victimized an entire community and made everyone in it feel unsafe.”
Now it is the federal government’s turn. The U.S. Department of Justice is still contemplating seeking the death penalty against Soliman, according to his federal lawyers. They say he would plead guilty to the federal hate crime and other charges too, if not for the lingering possibility of a death sentence.
But Soliman told the Boulder court that he would happily accept the maximum punishment available in the U.S.
“I wish that this state offered a death penalty,” Soliman said. “But given that the state does not carry the death penalty, but rather it could be a possibility in my federal case, I ask the prosecution from the federal case to impose the death penalty, because I find that to be the justice for Ms. Diamond.”
The attack occurred on a Sunday last year as demonstrators conducted what was a regular walk near the Boulder courthouse to show solidarity with Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Soliman, who had armed himself with a makeshift flamethrower and then drove up from Colorado Springs with that and Molotov cocktails, dressed as a gardener to get close to the marchers and then threw two of the 18 firebombs he had prepared. He shouted “Free Palestine!” and then burned himself as he tried to use the flamethrower, a device actually intended to spray for weeds.
Diamond, whose husband Louis was injured in the attack, was the only death. She lingered for weeks in a hospital before dying from injuries and burns she suffered in the attack. A dog, Jackson, was also killed.
On Thursday, Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty read a statement from the Diamond’s sons, Andrew and Ethan. They say that despite being over 80 years old, their mother was in excellent health and had international trips planned and a life full of family, friends and volunteer work in the arts.
“We ask that he never see his family again,” the family said. “Time has not provided any relief. … Our parents’ suffering is an utterly senseless tragedy.”
Soliman is Egyptian by birth but came to the U.S. with his family from Kuwait in 2022 and applied for asylum. That claim was pending at the time of the attack and his now ex-wife and five children are continuing to seek asylum. The U.S. government is working to deport them. They have never been implicated in the attack. Soliman’s federal attorneys are seeking to have them remain in the U.S. in the event their testimony as character witnesses is needed in a federal death penalty proceeding.
Several victims on Thursday spoke about Soliman’s family, who were otherwise living regular immigrant lives before the attack.
“He ruined his own life and that of his five children and his wife,” said Barbara Steinmetz, a Holocaust survivor, who fled Europe. Her statement was also read by Dougherty. “He didn’t even know these people … and even now, we don’t seek his death or harm to his family.”
Soliman told authorities after the attack that he had planned it for a year, had intended to kill everyone in the demonstration and would do it again if he could. He was angry about the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war in Gaza, triggered by the Oct. 7, 2024, attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians.
In previously unseen body-worn camera shown by Dougherty in court, Soliman told police right after the attack that he “tried to send a message.”
Dougherty seized on that, and his emotion during the interview, in talking about his daughter who had just graduated from high school.
“The only time he cries, it’s when he’s talking about his own family,” Dougherty said. “He doesn’t shed a single tear … for these people,” he said, gesturing to the rows of tearful victims behind him.
At times, that fraught Middle Eastern political backdrop penetrated the Boulder courtroom with victims of the attack referencing the long history of persecution of Jews around the world.
But in his final statement before sentencing, Dougherty steered clear of geopolitics and confined his remarks to the particular nature of the weapon Soliman chose and his victims.
“I can’t think of another case where a defendant set people on fire to try and kill them,” Dougherty said. “It was incredibly brutal and monstrous.” It was also “cowardly,” Dougherty said.
When his turn came to address the court, Soliman tried to separate Jewish people from what he referred to as “Zionists,” who support the Israeli state. At the same time, speaking in halting Arabic, he said he really didn’t have a plan to attack that group of demonstrators until he arrived in Boulder that day.
“When I went to Boulder on June 1, I had never been there and I did not know who I was going to see or who I was going to meet,” Soliman said. “I did not even know what was going to happen on that day.”
He then apologized repeatedly for the carnage he caused, as a federal public defender regularly stood, seemingly to advise him to curtail his remarks. He indicated he had listened to the victims as they spoke, occasionally referencing them by name. He then ended his statement to the court complaining about Zionism.
But even though Soliman agreed to plead guilty rather than putting the victims through reliving their pain in a trial, those guilty pleas did not amount to any sense of contrition for his actions, Dougherty said.
“I view this more as a surrender to the strength of the evidence than an acceptance of responsibility,” Dougherty said.
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