All four people taken hostage in the standoff at the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, some 40km west of Dallas, were freed unharmed and their suspected captor was killed. AFP
The man who died after holding four people hostage at a Texas synagogue in what President Joe Biden called an “act of terror” was identified by the FBI on January 16 as a 44-year-old British citizen named Malik Faisal Akram.
The four hostages – including a respected local rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker – were all freed unharmed on the night of January 15, prompting relief in the US, where the Jewish community and Biden renewed calls to fight anti-Semitism.
“There is no question that this was a traumatic experience,” Cytron-Walker said in a statement on January 16.
“We are resilient and we will recover,” he added.
There was “no indication” that anyone else was involved in the attack on the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in the small Texas town of Colleyville, the FBI’s field office in Dallas said in a statement.
A man identifying himself as Akram’s brother Gulbar said in a post to a local Muslim community Facebook page in Blackburn, in northwest England – where British police said Akram was from – that the suspect had suffered from mental health problems.
“We would like to say that we as a family do not condone any of his actions and would like to sincerely apologise wholeheartedly to all the victims involved in the unfortunate incident,” Gulbar said.
He added that he had been in touch with law enforcement at the scene in Texas and that his family hoped to get Akram’s body back to Britain for a funeral.
Biden declined to speculate on the motive but appeared to confirm reports that the hostage-taker was seeking the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist known as “Lady al-Qaida.”
“This was an act of terror” committed by an assailant who apparently “insisted on the release of someone who’s been in prison for over 10 years,” Biden told reporters during a visit to a hunger relief organisation in Philadelphia.
Britain’s foreign minister Liz Truss likewise on January 16 condemned the hostage-taking as an “act of terrorism and anti-Semitism”.
Siddiqui, the first woman to be suspected by the US of links to al-Qaida and a cause celebre in Pakistan and in South Asian jihadist circles, was detained in Afghanistan in 2008.
Two years later she was sentenced by a New York court to 86 years in prison for the attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan.
She is currently being held at a prison in Fort Worth, Texas – about 32km away from the synagogue which Akram attacked.
Siddiqui’s lawyer has said she “has absolutely no involvement” in the hostage situation and condemned it.
Any links she may have to Akram remained unclear.
FBI special agent Matthew DeSarno told reporters in Colleyville after the standoff that the investigation would “have global reach”.
He said the suspect’s demands were “focused on one issue that was not specifically threatening to the Jewish community.”
Britain’s ambassador to Washington confirmed that British authorities were “providing our full support to Texas and US law enforcement agencies”.
Cytron-Walker in his statement credited his congregation’s previous security training from the FBI and others with their survival from a harrowing ordeal.
