The June 2025 attack targeted supporters of Israeli prisoners of war in the Gaza Strip. Advocates say the perpetrator’s family was unfairly targeted.
Published May 7, 2026
Mohamed Soliman, accused of attacking demonstrators who had gathered to support Israeli prisoners of war in Gaza, Colorado, has pleaded guilty to murder.
Thursday’s plea was accompanied by renewed calls for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to halt efforts to deport Soliman’s family, which authorities say they had no prior knowledge of and fully condemn.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The family was held in a US immigration detention facility for the longest time under the Trump administration’s second term before being released in late April. The administration has promised to continue deportations.
Soliman faces more than 100 state criminal charges related to the June 2025 attack. Video showed him throwing a Molotov cocktail at protesters gathered in Boulder, Colorado. Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old woman, died from injuries sustained during the attack.
The 46-year-old Egyptian national pleaded guilty to two different categories of murder charges in connection with Diamond’s death. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He also faces federal hate crime charges.
In a statement read in court by prosecutors, Diamond’s sons asked Soliman not to see his family again because “he is responsible for their mother never being able to see her family again.”
Andrew and Ethan Diamond said their mother had been in “indescribable pain” for more than three weeks before her death.
“In those few weeks, we learned the full meaning of the expression “a living hell and a fate worse than death,” Diamond’s sons said in a statement.
family is detained
After the attack, the White House promised to swiftly deport Mr. Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, aged between 5 and 18. Lawmakers and community groups have denounced the effort as collective punishment.
El Gamal divorced her husband shortly after the attack, and her family categorically condemned the attack and denied any knowledge that it ever happened.
An FBI agent later testified under oath that there was no evidence that the family, who had not been charged with any crime, knew of the father’s plans.
After 10 months in an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, a judge ordered the family’s release at the end of April.
But they were re-detained shortly after during a scheduled ICE inspection, which their attorney Eric Lee denounced as a “kidnapping.” The family was released again after a judge ordered deportation flights grounded.
In a statement to Al Jazeera in April, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed that the “terrorist’s family” had been ordered released by an “activist judge.” In a statement, authorities said they would “continue to fight to eliminate people who have no right to be in our country, especially terrorists and their associates.”
Several local community groups and lawmakers in the Boulder area subsequently signed a public statement calling on immigration authorities to stop targeting the family.
“They belong here, and in a clear and united voice, we call on federal immigration authorities to end their persecution of this family and leave both them and our broader community in peace,” the statement said.
