Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – A man who launched a Molotov cocktail attack on Jewish protesters in Colorado last year that killed one person and injured more than a dozen others was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday, US media said. Mohamed Soliman, a 46-year-old Egyptian, admitted a raft of charges, including first-degree murder, over the horrific June attack in Boulder.
Soliman threw fire bombs and sprayed burning gasoline at a group of people who had gathered in the city in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas after the militant group’s assault on Israel in October 2023. Karen Diamond, 82, died from her injuries in the wake of the attack. Thursday’s proceedings heard victim impact statements, including from Diamond’s sons, Andrew and Ethan Diamond.
“Our mother suffered indescribable pain for more than three weeks before succumbing to her injuries,” said the statement read by Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, according to the Denver Post. “Our children won’t get to receive her wisdom.” Boulder County District Court Chief Judge Nancy Salomone told Soliman he will be imprisoned for life, without the possibility of parole. She added more than 2,000 years to the sentence — the maximum allowed for each felony he was charged with.
“This court finds that you chose to victimize people that were peacefully gathering together,” Salomone said. “You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community.” Soliman also faces federal hate crime charges, for which he could be sentenced to death. Police who rushed to the scene of the attack found 16 unused Molotov cocktails and a backpack weed sprayer containing gasoline that investigators say he had intended to use as a makeshift flamethrower.
US Homeland Security officials said Soliman was in the country illegally, having overstayed a tourist visa, but that he had applied for asylum in September 2022. Soliman’s now ex-wife, Hayam El Gamal, and the couple’s five children were taken into immigration custody after the attack, with President Donald Trump’s administration quick to pledge to deport them. The family had been held in an immigration facility in Texas until April when a federal judge ordered their release.
The Washington Post, citing El Gamal’s lawyer, said authorities had subsequently re-arrested them and attempted to deport them, only for federal judges to halt that effort again. Soliman’s attack was one of a number against Jewish people in Western countries since Hamas operatives killed more than 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel’s offensive in retaliation has left at least 72,000 people dead, according to Gaza’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.
It has also left much of the Gaza strip in ruins and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, forcing many of them to live without access to sanitation, healthcare, or adequate nutrition.
© 2024 AFP
