Boulder firebomber pleads guilty to federal hate crime charges, avoiding death penalty

Shelly Bradbury, The Denver Post on Oct 29, 2026

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DENVER — The man who killed a woman and injured more than a dozen other people in a firebombing on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall last year pleaded guilty to federal crimes Thursday in a deal that allowed him to escape the death penalty.

Mohamed Soliman, 46, is already serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty to more than 100 state crimes in connection with the June 1, 2025, attack. He added 12 federal convictions to that tally Thursday, including nine hate crime counts and three crimes related to using explosives.

Under the terms of the federal plea agreement, prosecutors and defense attorneys will ask that Soliman be sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years on the federal convictions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Hindman said during Thursday’s hearing in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Soliman will be sentenced Jan. 7.

The federal government will not pursue the death penalty, Peter McNeilly, the U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado, said during a news conference after the hearing. The decision not to pursue capital punishment was ultimately made by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, he said. McNeilly said the approach was “victim-driven.”

“The overwhelming voice of the victims is they would like this resolution, which ensures life in prison, holds him accountable for the hate-motivated act that he did, brings about finality, takes away any chance of appeal and also removes his platform to continue to peddle his hateful ideology,” McNeilly said of the plea agreement and life prison sentence.

Soliman used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn people who had gathered on Boulder’s popular pedestrian mall for a weekly demonstration organized by the local Run For Their Lives chapter urging the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.

Fourteen people were burned, including 82-year-old Karen Diamond, a member of Boulder’s Jewish community who died June 25, 2025, from her injuries.

Witnesses said Soliman shouted “Free Palestine” during his attack. Federal prosecutors pursued hate crime charges because they said Soliman targeted his victims because they were Israeli or he believed they were Israeli. Soliman’s defense attorneys early on argued the hate crime counts were unsupported because Soliman wanted to target “Zionists,” rather than all Israeli people, and that he considered “Zionists” to be anyone who supported Israel’s existence on Palestinian land.

In his guilty plea Thursday, Soliman admitted he targeted the victims because of their real or perceived religion or national origin. Handcuffed and shackled, Soliman calmly answered Senior Judge John Kane’s questions through a translator during the about hour-long hearing.

Ed Victor, a Jewish victim of the attack, said Soliman’s admission of guilt, particularly to the hate crimes, brought some relief and closure.

“We happened to be Jews, not all Jews, some Jews,” he said of the group that day. “He was targeting us because of who we were at that time. So to me, by having that hate crime identified and pleaded guilty, it showed it was in fact an antisemitic act,” he said. “…He wasn’t just being, I’ll use the word ‘anti-Zionism,’ against Israel. No, he was against the Jews who happened to be there at that time, peacefully raising awareness for the hostages in Gaza.”

Victor added that he felt comfortable with prosecutors declining the death penalty, in part because doing so would resolve the federal case much more quickly.

Soliman pleaded guilty to the state crimes in May. He previously had offered repeatedly to plead guilty to all 12 federal charges if prosecutors agreed not to pursue capital punishment.

Soliman, who was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait for 17 years, arrived in the U.S. in August 2022 on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023. He overstayed his visa and sought political asylum in September 2022. He and his family settled in the Colorado Springs area.

Soliman received permission to stay in the United States in February 2023 while his asylum application was pending, according to court records, and received a work permit in March 2023.

His now-former wife and five children have faced deportation efforts since the attack, though authorities say his family had no involvement in the ambush or knowledge that he was planning it.

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