Boulder attack suspect appears in federal court on hate crime charge
The Byron G. Rogers U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver is pictured on Jan. 21, 2021. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
The man accused of injuring more than a dozen people in a firebombing attack on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall appeared on Friday in Denver for the first time in federal court, where he faces a hate crime charge.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian citizen, has been charged in connection with the attack on participants in the Boulder chapter of Run For Their Lives, a group that aims to raise awareness of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. An arrest warrant alleges that he told investigators after the attack that he had targeted the group because he wanted to 'kill all Zionist people.'
The federal hearing came one day after the defendant was formally charged on 118 criminal counts in state court in Boulder County, including dozens of charges of attempted murder and the use of incendiary devices. If convicted on those state-level charges, he faces a combined sentence of hundreds of years in prison.
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The U.S. attorney's office in Denver separately charged the suspect with one count of 'a hate crime offense involving the actual or perceived race, religion, or national origin,' as part of what acting U.S. Attorney J. Bishop Grewell called a 'message to the community that no acts of anti-Semitism are going to be tolerated.' Grewell suggested earlier this week that additional federal charges may be forthcoming.
The suspect was escorted into the courtroom Friday afternoon by U.S. marshals for an administrative hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. Speaking through an Arabic-language interpreter, he gave short affirmative answers to a series of questions from Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O'Hara regarding his rights as a criminal defendant. He will be represented by an attorney from the Office of the Federal Public Defender.
O'Hara set a preliminary hearing in the federal case for June 18.
Federal authorities say the suspect, a Colorado Springs resident, was living in the U.S. unlawfully after overstaying a visa that expired in 2023. A federal judge in Denver has temporarily blocked the deportation of his wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, after the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had taken them into custody and was 'processing (them) for removal proceedings from the U.S.'
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