Rabat – In a country increasingly fractured by the consequences of its own foreign policy, the latest eruption of violence arrived on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Boulder, Colorado. What began as a rally for Israeli captives ended in flames.
The suspect, identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, has been charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder, federal hate crimes, and terrorism-related offenses, after an incendiary attack on a rally for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder on Sunday afternoon.
Soliman, 45, now faces a long list of charges. He has been charged with 16 counts of attempted first-degree murder — eight for attempted murder with intent and after deliberation, and another eight for attempted murder with extreme indifference to human life.
In addition to those charges, he faces eight counts of first-degree assault, two counts of using an incendiary device, and sixteen counts of attempted use of an incendiary device.
On the federal level, Soliman is charged with a hate crime for allegedly causing bodily injury based on the victims’ actual or perceived race, religion, or national origin. If convicted on all state-level charges and sentenced consecutively, Soliman could face up to 624 years in prison.
The incident occurred during a “Run For Their Lives” event — a public rally organized to call for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. According to eyewitness accounts and federal investigators, the suspect shouted “Free Palestine!” before hurling Molotov cocktails and using a makeshift flamethrower against the demonstrators.
The attack – which was immediately labelled as a “ targeted act of terrorsim” by the FBI — injured 12 people aged 52 to 88. The injured were rushed to hospitals across the Denver metro area, and at least one individual was initially listed in critical condition.
According to the FBI and a federal criminal complaint, Soliman admitted to carrying out the attack and told investigators he had spent over a year planning it. He said he had intentionally targeted what he called a “Zionist group,” stating that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people,” that he “wished they were all dead,” and that he would “do it again.”
Following the attack, Soliman was arrested at the scene and taken into custody at the Boulder County Jail. On Monday evening, he appeared in court via video link for a brief hearing, during which the judge confirmed a protection order barring him from contacting the victims. A follow-up hearing for the formal filing of charges is scheduled for Thursday, July 5.
A flame torch for anti-immigrant rhetoric
Soliman, an Egyptian national who had been residing in El Paso County, Colorado, entered the United States on a visa that expired two years ago, later receiving work authorization valid through March 2025.
This immigration detail — irrelevant to the core of the matter — is being cynically weaponized to advance both pro-Israel propaganda and anti-migrant sentiment, fueling racist narratives that serve to distract from the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
“This is yet another example of why we must keep our borders SECURE, and deport illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our homeland,” weighed in US president Donald Trump, seizing the opportunity to stoke his anti-immigrant stance.
The attack occurred in the shadow of a growing global reckoning with Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians — a campaign that the United States materially enables and politically shields.
As many have long warned, the violence the US exports through its unconditional support of apartheid and occupation abroad inevitably manifests within its own borders. This act of violence is not isolated; it is a symptom of a far deeper disease — one rooted in colonization, white supremacy and the normalization of state-sponsored brutality.
The incident comes at a time when US media channels have already been reeling about the two Israeli embassy workers that were fatally shot outside the Jewish museum in Washington DC on May 21, from a Chicago-born Elias Rodrigues who maintained that his actions were driven by Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
