Boulder firebomb terrorist Mohamed Sabry Soliman and his murder of an Israeli hostage advocate were praised by a Colorado anti-Israel student group on the anniversary of the attack.

Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Leeds group Direct Confrontation Media published a now-deleted statement of solidarity with Soliman on Monday, who in 2025 threw two Molotov cocktails at participants of a Run for Your Lives rally for the release of October 7 Massacre hostages, burning 29 people and inflicting fatal wounds on 82-year-old Karen Diamond.

“One year ago today, Mohamed Sabry Soliman took direct action against the Zionist death cult festering in our city. He struck against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide,” read the text of a website version of the statement published by SJP and still linked in its social media biography.

“The state would have us believe that Mohamed took the action he did because he is insane-a fanatic, a terrorist, guilty of a hate crime-but we know the truth and we reject the state’s inversion of it. Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide. He refused the comfortable position of the grateful immigrant and the role of obedient subject, choosing confrontation with a violent system over passive proximity to the comfort of empire.”

Boulder SJP characterized the victims and participants of the rally as “colonists,” and the hostages that they were advocating for as “war criminals” who ostensibly provided a pretext for a supposed genocide in Gaza. The march was an act of “Zionist violence,” according to the SJP chapter, asserting that there was no difference between speech and force.

‘Manifestation of Zionist violence a lethal threat,’ SJP says

“We reject the distinction between speech and material force. The Run for Their Lives procession functions as a mechanism for normalizing the celebration of mass killers, rendering ordinary the sight of war criminals treated as heroes on streets that sit upon stolen land,” said Boulder SJP. “Mohamed refused their normalization with direct action. He chose to treat the manifestation of Zionist violence as the lethal threat it actually constitutes.”

The American student group condemned the 46-year-old Egyptian National’s May 7 sentencing to life in prison, though Soliman himself expressed remorse for his crimes and himself pleaded guilty to the 101 charges, which included first degree murder, attempted murder, assault, and criminal use of incendiary devices. The eight consecutive life sentences were a federal attempt to “assassinate” Soliman, according to SJP, which also decried the hate crime charges that he still faced in federal court as a discriminatory legal mechanism used against Muslims and Arabs since the September 11 attacks.

Boulder SJP also attacked the arrest and subsequent release of Soliman’s family by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as “an instrument of collective punishment,” and a tactic used both in the US and Gaza.

“We honor a man who sacrificed his comfort and his proximity to empire, willingly expending his own liberty in attaining his objective,” said SJP. 

The group demanded the release of Soliman, abolish ICE, and called on others to “continue the struggle,” as his “act of resistance obligates us to maintain unyielding opposition against every structure that normalizes occupation while enabling genocide.”

“Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine affirms that the Palestinian Resistance stands as the sole legitimate authority capable of delivering accountability for the genocidal actions of the Zionist entity,” the statement concluded. “Mohamed acted alone on June 1st, compelled by the grisly realities of a war against his people and the absolute refusal of formal channels to deliver anything resembling justice.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which brought attention to the now-deleted Instagram post on Tuesday, called the post “unacceptable and simply horrific.”

“While we and others around the country remembered and mourned Karen Diamond z”l, who died from her injuries, and honored the other victims who were badly burned, the local SJP chapter chose to condone the violent attack that claimed an innocent life and left others with devastating injuries,” ADL said in X. “The content of the post is beyond reprehensible. It is so detached from basic facts, human decency, and reality that it would be difficult to take seriously if its message were not so dangerous.”

Reuters reported that at his trial, Soliman had asked the prosecution to impose the death penalty, and previously told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people” in an attack that he had plotted for a year.

Soliman had reportedly yelled “free Palestine,” as he threw the gasoline bombs. While he apologized and insisted he held no malice against Jewish people, he lamented the war in Gaza and insisted that the “enemy is Zionism.”