A Colorado man has been charged with federal hate crimes for his role in a gasoline bomb attack at a pro-Israel rally, state and federal law enforcement officials said Monday.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman has faced a series of state charges, including attempted murder, after trying to get people on the Hamas-led attack Israeli attack after a group that brought hostages in the October 2023 attack.
“No one should suffer any form of violence, but our law recognizes that this violence is especially harmful when someone is targeted for his race, religion or national descent,” the chief attorney for the Colorado D.C. said at a press conference Monday.
“My office and our partners hope that justice will help heal people in this community and communities across the country.”
Soliman, 45, has planned for more than a year of attacks, a affidavit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice said. Investigators found 14 gas-filled Molotov cocktails near the place where the suspect was detained.
Police also found his car parked in a nearby car and had a gasoline-based herbicide sprayer on the scene. Soriman told investigators he learned how to build fire bombs from YouTube.
The affidavit refers to a video posted on social media during the attack, showing Soliman “shirtless, walking back and forth while holding something that appeared to be a Molotov cocktail”.
The suspect, who was detained in lieu of a US $10 million bail, told police he “wanted to kill all Zionists and hoped they were all dead,” the affidavit said.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old suspect who attacked a pro-Israeli rally in Colorado, has injured eight people, and has been charged with numerous charges for alleged assault and use of explosives. U.S. immigration and customs law enforcement said Soriman had expired his visa and obtained an expired work permit.
The attack is the latest violence against Jewish Americans, linked to anger at the escalating Israeli military offensive in Gaza. This comes after two Israeli embassy aides outside the Jewish Museum in the capital of Washington state last month.
According to the complaint, Soliman lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and five children, a city about 160 kilometers south of Boulder. The affidavit says he waited until his daughter graduated and attacked.
Todd Lyons, acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said Soliman had overheard the tourist visa and obtained an expired work permit.
The Department of Homeland Security and Justice did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI Denver office, which is handling the case, did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls for details of the case.
“We're trying to find millions of people from past administrations who aren't properly screened,” Lyons said at a press conference in Boston. “I'll tell you that this is the ice's huge effort right now.”
Lyon declined to provide more information, but a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security had previously said Soliman entered the country in August 2022 and applied for asylum next month.
“The suspect Mohamed Soliman is illegal in our country,” the spokesman said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post that such attacks will not be tolerated. “This is another example of what we have to ensure borders are safe and expel illegal anti-American activists from our homeland,” he said.
Boulder police said four women and four men aged 52 to 88 were taken to the hospital after the attack. Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm, Chabad director of the University of Colorado Boulder, told CBS Colorado that the 88-year-old victim was a massacre refugee fleeing Europe.
Four more people who suffered minor injuries also stood up, officials said on Monday.
The attack took place at the Pearl Street Mall in the popular pedestrian shopping district near the University of Colorado, a group dedicated to drawing attention to hostages following the 2023 attack on Israel.
Sunday’s attack wasn’t the first time Boulder’s striking mass violence, a college town that attracts many young professionals and outdoor enthusiasts. In 2021, a gunman fatally shot and killed 10 people, including a policeman at a local supermarket.
