The Department of Justice charged Colorado attacker Mohamed Sabru Soliman with hate crime and no counts related to terrorism, while FBI director Kash Patel called the Boulder attack a targeted terrorism against the Jewish community. FBI deputy director Dan Bongino clarified that the FBI will investigate the attack as a targeted terror. Explaining the difference between the DoJ and the FBI, Bongino said everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the justice system. “But we are the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are not the Federal Bureau of Word Games,” Bongino said. “When the evidence passed to our FBI leadership team, from an active crime scene, includes clearly ideologically-motivated statements, video, multiple witness accounts, Molotov cocktails, and large gatherings of like-minded people, we will INVESTIGATE those incidents as targeted acts of terror,” Dan said.

Why Mohamed Sabry Soliman was not charged with terror

To charge someone with terror, the prosecutor would have to prove at trial that the person is either associated with, or inspired by designated foreign terrorist organisations. Without this, it is difficult for the Justice Department to bring terrorism charges. Soliman was not a known offender, and no ties to any organization were found in the preliminary investigation. An Egyptian illegally staying in the US after his visa expired in March this year, Soliman said he threw only two Molotov cocktails as he got scared, as he had never hurt anyone before. He told the law enforcement that he had been planning the attack for the last year but waited for his daughter to graduate. He wanted to kill all Zionists and knew about the Jewish group in Colorado that assembled every Sunday, demanding the release of the Israelis imprisoned in Gaza. Though there was no fatality as the fire was immediately put out, 12 people were injured. Soliman planned on dying in the attack and he mentioned several times to the law enforcement officers that he wanted to be dead.