Suspect in Boulder Pearl Street Mall firebombing to plead guilty to state charges, attorneys say

Shelly Bradbury, The Denver Post on May 4, 2026

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DENVER — The man charged with carrying out an antisemitic terror attack on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall last year will plead guilty to state charges this week and be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, his attorneys wrote in a court filing Sunday.

Mohamed Soliman, 46, faces more than 184 charges in Boulder County District Court in connection with the June 1 attack that killed one woman and injured 29 others.

He is accused of using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn people who had gathered on the popular pedestrian mall for a weekly demonstration urging the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.

Witnesses said Soliman shouted “Free Palestine” during his attack, which is being prosecuted in both state and federal court.

Karen Diamond, 82, died on June 25 from injuries sustained in the attack.

Soliman is set to plead guilty Thursday to all state charges, including first-degree murder, during a hearing in Boulder County District Court, his federal public defenders wrote in a Sunday court filing. Soliman will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus at least 400 years, they wrote.

Soliman last year offered to plead guilty to federal hate-crime charges and be sentenced to life in prison, but federal prosecutors have not acted on his offer as they consider whether to pursue the death penalty, his federal attorneys wrote in a motion to stop the deportation of Soliman’s ex-wife and five children.

The attorneys argued that Soliman’s family would be critical witnesses should the federal prosecution proceed as a death penalty case, and that his family should not be deported because they would be required to testify in court.

Soliman’s now ex-wife, Hayam El Gamal, and the couple’s five children were taken into immigration custody shortly after the Boulder attack. They spent 10 months in a Texas detention facility before they were briefly released in April, then taken back into custody, then released again — all within the span of four days. El Gamal and Soliman divorced in April.

“The United States Government has made its intentions abundantly clear: it will never give up its effort to deport Mr. Soliman’s ex-wife and children,” Soliman’s attorneys wrote. “If the government removes these key witnesses and seeks the death penalty against Mr. Soliman, the ensuing proceedings will violate Mr. Soliman’s Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights.”

Soliman is accused of dressing as a gardener and using a commercial-grade weed sprayer filled with gasoline as a flamethrower. Investigators say he also crafted Molotov cocktails by filling wine bottles and Ball jars with gasoline and tucking red rags into the tops to use as fuses.

Soliman attacked the group of demonstrators for the city’s chapter of Run for Their Lives outside the Boulder County Historic Courthouse just before 1:30 p.m. He threw at least two Molotov cocktails at the demonstrators, investigators alleged.

He planned the attack for more than a year, prosecutors said, and switched from plotting a shooting to throwing firebombs after he was blocked from buying a gun.

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 the motion, and received a work permit in March 2023. El Gamal also received authorization to work.

Soliman’s attack on the Pearl Street Mall shocked his family, who knew nothing of his plans and cooperated with investigators after the attack, according to the motion.

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