Mohamed Soliman pleads guilty in 2025 Boulder Molotov attack, admits targeting Jewish group

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 46-year-old Colorado Springs man already serving a state life sentence in the Boulder attack, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to 12 counts tied to the 2025 Molotov-cocktail assault on a gathering of the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives.

Soliman pleaded guilty to nine federal hate-crime counts and three explosives-related counts, the Justice Department said. In the plea, he admitted that on June 1, 2025, he lit and threw two Molotov cocktails into the group’s gathering at the Pearl Street Mall, in front of the Boulder County Courthouse, and that he targeted the participants because of their actual or perceived Israeli national origin and Jewish religion.

The Justice Department said the attack killed one person and caused permanent and life-threatening injuries to several others. Local and state reporting identified the person who later died from her injuries as Karen Diamond, 82.

Federal sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 7, 2027. The Justice Department said the nine hate-crime counts each carry statutory maximum penalties of up to life in prison, while the three additional explosives counts carry up to 50 years in prison to be served consecutively.

The federal plea comes months after Soliman pleaded guilty in May in Boulder District Court to more than 100 state charges, including first-degree murder, and received a life sentence, according to state reporting. The state case addressed the killing and other violent-crime charges, while the federal prosecution focused on the bias-motivation and explosives elements of the attack.

The federal case was investigated by the FBI Denver Field Office and the Boulder Police Department and prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado. In a Justice Department release, U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly said, “By his own admissions, Mohamed Soliman’s hateful attack on our neighbors in Boulder was antisemitic.”

Run for Their Lives is a grassroots movement that began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel and organizes regular walks and runs to draw attention to hostages taken that day. The Boulder chapter had been holding weekly events since fall 2023.