Mohamed Sabry Soliman Is Sentenced to Life in Prison for Colorado Attack

The man accused of carrying out an antisemitic firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo., was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to every state charge against him.

The defendant, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, pleaded guilty to 101 charges, including one count of murder for the death of Karen Diamond, 82, in an attack last June against a group of marchers calling for the release of hostages captured by Hamas in its October 2023 attack on Israel.

The firebombing attack wounded more than a dozen other people, horrified Boulder’s tightknit Jewish community and intensified fears of rising antisemitic violence in the United States.

It sowed “terror, fear and death,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty of Boulder told the court.

On Thursday, many of the victims and their families stood up to recount the physical and mental pain they have endured since the attack.

They described how they ran in terror that day, as Molotov cocktails hurled by Mr. Soliman exploded around them, how they tried to extinguish fires that scorched their clothes and shoes and burned their friends and fellow marchers.

“When I’m alone and close my eyes I can vividly see Karen’s body in flames,” Orrie Gartner, who was at the march, said in court.

Several people said they spent the past year haunted by memories of the screams and the flames, the stench of gasoline and burned hair. Some said they now searched for threats wherever they went. Others worry they could be targeted again.

One man said he scanned for exits whenever he left home. Another said he now hid his Star of David necklace, while one woman said she wore hers in defiance of hatred. Others said the attack had pierced their illusions that the college town of Boulder was a safe place.

“We learned the full meaning of the expression ‘Living Hell,’” Ms. Diamond’s sons, Ethan and Andrew, said in a letter read in court on Thursday.

Ms. Diamond’s husband, Lou, was also severely burned in the attack and spent a month in excruciating pain recovering in a hospital burn unit, next door to his wife’s room, their sons said. Ms. Diamond died there three weeks after the attack.

Their sons said the firebombing had shattered their parents’ full and vibrant lives. The Diamonds had just run together in the Bolder Boulder 10K race, where Ms. Diamond had placed fourth in her age group, and her husband, then 84, had come in seventh in his. They were always out hiking, gardening and attending symphony performances, and they had been planning a trip to France.

“Now, none of those things will happen,” their sons said in their statement.

In the gallery, victims and their families cried and clutched tissues handed out by courthouse staff.

After the victims’ statements concluded, Mr. Soliman, an Egyptian national who immigrated to the United States in 2022, spoke publicly for the first time, saying in Arabic that he regretted carrying out the attack and that he deserved the death penalty.

“I find that to be the justice for Ms. Diamond,” he said in court, seated in an orange-striped jumpsuit beside his lawyers.

He denied that his crimes had been driven by anti-Jewish hatred but then launched into a rambling diatribe against Zionism, which he described as “the enemy.” He also condemned the deaths of children during the war in Gaza.

“Yes, I am against Israel, and I can’t deny that,” he said. “And that’s my right.”

Chief District Judge Nancy W. Salomone rejected Mr. Soliman’s arguments, telling him that his “choices were acts of terror, and they victimized an entire community.”

“You chose to victimize these people because they were members of the Jewish community,” she told him.

Mr. Soliman also sought to absolve his wife and five children from any connection with the attack, saying they would have tried to stop him if they had known his plans.

His family was taken into federal custody after the attack and held for months in a Texas immigration detention center before being released earlier this year. His lawyers have gone to court to prevent the Trump administration from deporting Mr. Soliman’s family.

The hearing on Thursday began when Judge Salomone went step by step through each charge and named each victim to verify Mr. Soliman’s pleas.

He answered her questions tersely in Arabic, acknowledging that he was giving up his rights to a trial and appeal. He said he had no questions for the judge.

“Guilty,” he said, over and over and over, to charges of attempted murder, assault and other crimes.

Because Colorado has abolished the death penalty, Mr. Soliman’s sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for the murder of Ms. Diamond was the harshest possible state-level sentence. He could still face the death penalty in an ongoing federal prosecution on hate crimes charges.

Prosecutors say Mr. Soliman spent a year planning the attack against Run for Their Lives, a group that met every Sunday in downtown Boulder to demonstrate for the release of hostages seized by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel.

Many of the marchers were members of Jewish congregations in Boulder. That day, their numbers included an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, at least one child and a person in a wheelchair.

“They were completely defenseless,” Mr. Dougherty, the district attorney, told the judge. “To show up and attack people who were standing outside the Boulder courthouse in a peaceful gathering, walking in the middle of the day? That is, beyond anything, cowardly.”

Mr. Soliman disguised himself as a gardener to get close to the group, and then hurled homemade Molotov cocktails at the marchers and shouted “Free Palestine,” law enforcement authorities have said. An F.B.I. affidavit in the case said Mr. Soliman had wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”