
The suspect in Colorado's anti-Semitic terror attack said Monday that he had planned the attack for a year, telling federal investigators that he "wanted to kill all Zionist people" and "would do it again."
Mohamed Soliman, a 45-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt, admitted during a police interview that he specifically targeted the Jewish group that gathered Sunday to raise awareness for Hamas's hostages, according to an affidavit filed Monday.
The Justice Department on Monday charged Soliman with a federal hate crime. Soliman is also facing state charges of 384 years for 16 counts of attempted murder, 48 years for two counts of using an incendiary device, and 192 years for 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary advice, according to the Boulder district attorney.
Terror charges have not been ruled out, according to acting U.S. attorney J. Bishop Grewell.
Soliman threw Molotov cocktails and used what the New York Times called a "makeshift flamethrower" on peaceful Boulder, Colo., demonstrators, injuring 12 victims, including a Holocaust survivor.
Investigators also found a black container nearby with 14 more Molotov cocktails.
The terror attack came just weeks after anti-Israel terrorist Elias Rodriguez murdered two Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, as the young couple left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump has ramped up his crackdown on anti-Semitism, which surged in the United States under former president Joe Biden's watch. Trump's second administration has revoked visas of foreign nationals linked to anti-Semitic activity and withheld billions in federal funding from universities that fail to curb anti-Semitic protests on campus.
"We refuse to accept a world in which Jewish Americans are targeted for who they are and what they believe," Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a statement, while Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon vowed that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division "will act swiftly and decisively to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice."
Update 5:07 p.m.: This piece has been updated with the number of people injured in the attack and the state charges.
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