The man accused of throwing bombs towards people demonstrating on behalf of Israeli hostages in Gaza was charged on Wednesday with 12 federal hate crimes for purposefully targeting victims on the Pearl Street Mall because of their national origin.
An indictment unsealed on Wednesday accuses Colorado Springs resident Mohamed Sabry Soliman of planning his June 1 attack by researching how to make Molotov cocktails and searching online for Zionist events to find the Boulder gathering.
Soliman told police that he viewed “anyone supporting the exist (sic) of Israel on our land” to be “Zionist.” He said he decided “to take his revenge from these people.”
When he arrived on the mall, he was armed with a crate of more than a dozen bottles filled with gasoline, he looked for the “Zionist” group and threw two gasoline filled bombs towards people carrying Israeli flags and signs to draw attention to the hostages, the indictment said.
When throwing one of the Molotov cocktails, Soliman shouted “Free Palestine!”, according to the indictment. A document recovered from his car later had scrawlings and sentences, including one that read, “Zionism is our enemies until Jerusalem is liberated and they are expelled from our land,” and further described Israel as a “cancer entity.”
In a court appearance last week, Soliman’s defense attorneys previewed how they may approach this case. They’ll argue that Soliman was targeting people in Boulder based on their political beliefs -- not national origin -- and that political beliefs aren’t considered a protected group under federal hate crime laws.
David Kraut, Soliman’s federal public defender, said the man had no way of knowing anything about the people he attacked except that he viewed them as supporters of Zionism and Israel.
There were about 30 or so people on the pedestrian mall that day in the group called Run For Their Lives. In addition to the Israeli and American flags, they carried signs with pictures of Israeli people being held in Gaza, according to attorneys.
The crowd included children to elderly people.
“What really matters … is did Mr. Soliman define Zionism as national origin in his mind?” Kraut said, to a federal judge last week. “The evidence presented in this hearing clearly answers that question no. He defines Zionism according to political opinion.”
The grand jury issued indictments on eight counts of willfully causing bodily injury to the victims because of the actual and perceived national origin of the person.
They charged four additional counts of violating interstate foreign commerce by using the jars and gasoline in the attack, both produced outside of Colorado; attempted murder; knowingly carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony and knowingly using fire and explosives to commit a crime.
Soliman also faces more than 100 state charges filed in Boulder County and remains in custody. Eight people were hospitalized in the attack, two were severely injured. State officials say there were more than a dozen victims, but many of them were people trying to help the initial group get medical assistance.
