Egyptian news outlets have seized on Sunday’s arson attack in Boulder, Colorado, to revive allegations against the Muslim Brotherhood, branding the Egyptian-born suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, as a supporter of the outlawed movement even though US investigators have provided no such finding.
Soliman, 45, is accused of hurling Molotov cocktails and blasting a makeshift flamethrower at elderly participants in a weekly walk on Pearl Street that calls for the release of 58 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Eight people aged 67-88 were injured, including a Holocaust survivor; one victim remained in critical condition on Monday evening, police said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is treating the incident as a suspected lone-actor hate crime. Court filings show that Soliman entered the United States on a B-1/B-2 tourist visa in August 2022, overstayed when it expired in February 2023 and received a one-year work permit that lapsed this past March. Homeland Security officials said he had made a failed asylum attempt in 2005. He is being held in Boulder County Jail on five felony counts, including attempted first-degree murder and use of incendiary devices, with bail set at $10 million.
Brotherhood narrative dominates Cairo headlines
The Cairo-based news portal Egypt Telegraph ran a prominent banner reading, “Mansoura man behind Colorado attack ‘liked’ Ikhwan pages,” claiming that archived screenshots from a Facebook account bearing Soliman’s name showed repeated endorsements of Muslim Brotherhood content and the slogan “Islam is the solution.” The site did not publish the images.
Several pro-government talk shows echoed the report, arguing that the Boulder flames reflected what they called a pattern of Brotherhood-inspired violence exported abroad since the movement was banned in Egypt in 2013. While commentators uniformly condemned the assault as terrorism, they insisted it underscored the need for Western governments to keep the Brotherhood on terror watch lists.
Words of warning
Independent analysts urged caution. “Free-Palestine rhetoric is not unique to the Brotherhood, and so far we have only a single media claim about old social-media posts,” said Amr Fathy, a researcher at the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs. “Any organisational link must come from forensic evidence, not speculation on television.”
US law enforcement agencies have not commented on Soliman’s political affiliations. A spokesperson for the FBI’s Denver field office declined to discuss “any associations or material support” while the investigation is under way.
The Anti-Defamation League noted that fringe Arabic-language social-media accounts praised Soliman as a “hero,” but said mainstream Arab outlets reported the attack as straight crime news. “The Egyptian media focus on the Brotherhood is a domestic political lens, not a reflection of verified facts,” an ADL statement said.
Egyptian newspapers also highlighted that Soliman’s US visa was issued after 2021, with columnists faulting what they called lax American screening. A front-page editorial in the state-run Al-Gomhuria urged Washington to “re-examine its hospitality to extremists,” while a commentator on Ten TV cited the case as proof that “Brotherhood ideology remains a global threat if left unchecked.”
US President Donald Trump echoed the theme on Truth Social, writing that the attack showed why “the Muslim Brotherhood must stay banned and its sympathisers removed.” The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, for its part, condemned the Boulder assault and said its embassy in Washington had supplied US authorities with “open-source references to the suspect’s online activity.”
Run For Their Lives, the Colorado-based group whose march was targeted, vowed to continue walking every Sunday until the hostages are freed. “Terror will not silence us,” the group said in a statement.
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