By Steve Gorman and Keith Coffman
DENVER, May 7 (Reuters) - The man who lobbed gasoline bombs at a pro-Israel rally last year in Colorado, setting several people aflame including a woman who later died from her burns, was sentenced on Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison but said he wished to be executed.
Mohamed Soliman, 46, an Egyptian national, pleaded guilty to 101 charges brought by state prosecutors, including first-degree murder, then apologized in court and decried his own crimes as contrary to “the teachings of Islam” in a statement before his sentence was pronounced.
He still faces separate hate-crimes charges in federal court that carry a possible life sentence or the death penalty.
Dressed in white-and-orange-striped jail garb and seated beside his attorney with his hands shackled in his lap, Soliman said he regretted that Colorado lacked capital punishment.
“I ask the prosecution from the federal case to impose the death penalty,” he said in pre-sentencing remarks, delivered through an Arabic interpreter near the end of the three-hour proceeding livestreamed from the Boulder County District Court.
Judge Nancy Salomone sentenced him to the maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole under two definitions of first-degree murder.
A total of 2,128 additional years in prison was tacked onto his life term as the symbolic maximum sentence carried by the remainder of the charges, including attempted murder, assault, and criminal use of explosives and incendiary devices.
The sentencing followed victim impact statements presented in court by more than a dozen people who took turns recounting the horror of the attack and its aftermath. Most said the trauma they experienced 11 months ago haunts them still, shattering their sense of safety and security.
PEACEFUL RALLY ERUPTED IN FLAMES
Soliman admitted that he tossed two Molotov cocktails at people taking part in a peaceful rally in downtown Boulder staged by Run For Your Lives, a group organized to draw attention to the plight of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas militants from Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Prosecutors said Soliman also used a makeshift blowtorch fashioned from a spray bottle during his attack. He 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.
Prosecutors said 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.
Authorities identified a total of 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 also suffered severe burns but survived.
According to affidavits filed in court by prosecutors, Soliman told investigators after his arrest that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people” and had planned his attack for a year, but delayed going through with it until after his daughter had graduated from high school.
According to prosecutors, he used Molotov cocktails instead of a gun because his non-citizen status blocked him from buying firearms. Soliman in court said he sought to obtain a gun for self-defense only.
TENSIONS OVER GAZA
The attack came amid heightened tensions in the U.S. over the 2023 Hamas raid and Israel’s war of retaliation in Gaza, which spurred a surge in incidents of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes and a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that many supporters of Israel branded as antisemitic.
Public Defender Kathryn Herold, speaking on Soliman’s behalf before he addressed the court, said her client was making “no excuses” for his crime, adding he had “felt overwhelmed for the suffering in the world and he acted on that impulse.”
According to a court filing by defense lawyers, Soliman offered to plead guilty in the federal hate-crimes case in return for a lifelong prison sentence, but the government has yet to decide whether to accept his proposal.
In his pre-sentencing allocution in Boulder on Thursday, Soliman insisted he bore no ill will toward Jews. Near the end of his lengthy statement, he lamented the “thousands of families who have lost their families in Palestine and Gaza,” and said the “enemy is Zionism.”
Judge Salomone called his choices “acts of terror,” telling the defendant: “Your words notwithstanding, you chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community.”
Soliman, who lived with his wife and five children in Colorado Springs before the incident, also asserted that his family members were completely unaware of his intentions beforehand.
The family was taken into immigration custody last June after his arrest, and transported to a detention facility in Texas. They were held until a court-ordered release on April 23, more than 10 months later.
The children and their mother, who subsequently divorced Soliman, were re-arrested on April 25 just after returning to Colorado. They were freed again when attorneys intervened a day later, according to court documents.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; additional reporting by Keith Koffman in Denver; Editing by David Gregorio and Bill Berkrot)
