Man is charged with hate crime in Colorado flame attack

BOULDER, Colo. — The man accused of an attack against demonstrators who were seeking to bring attention to Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip had been planning the attack for a year and told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” federal prosecutors said Monday.

The man, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was federally charged Monday with a hate crime in the Sunday afternoon attack in Boulder, Colorado. The Boulder County district attorney’s office announced charges Monday of multiple state counts of attempted murder, assault and possession of incendiary devices.

Authorities said that at some time before 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Soliman, a man from Egypt whose American tourist visa had expired, ignited two Molotov cocktails — glass bottles filled with flammable liquid — and threw them toward the demonstrators. Eight people were wounded, two of them seriously.

The wounded, four men and four women ranging in age from 52 to 88, were participating in a weekly event called Run for Their Lives, which is held in cities around the world and is designed to call attention to the hostages taken by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel that ignited a war.

Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, according to an FBI affidavit.

The attack came two weeks after two staff members at the Israeli Embassy were fatally shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

Attacks against Jewish people and property have increased sharply in the United States and around the world since the deadly 2023 Hamas-led attack and Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

Soliman, 45, entered the United States from Egypt in August 2022 and stayed illegally after the visa expired in February 2023, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.

“The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” McLaughlin said in a post on social media.

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