On Sunday, U.S. authorities identified the man who took four people hostage at a Texas synagogue as a British citizen, and British police later arrested two teenagers for an attack that President Joe Biden called “a ‘” Acts of Terror”.
The arrested man, whom the FBI named Malik Faisal Akram, 44, was killed Saturday in a 10-hour siege in the small town of Collyville.
Hours later, British counter-terrorism police arrested two people and questioned them about the incident.
“Two teenagers were detained in South Manchester tonight. They remain in custody,” Greater Manchester Police said in a statement.
The FBI field office in Dallas had earlier said there was “no indication” that anyone else was involved in the attack on Israel’s Beth Synagogue.
The four hostages — including a respected local rabbi, Charlie Seton Walker — were all released Saturday night unharmed, prompting a sigh of relief in America, where the Jewish community and worshippers Den repeated his call for a fight against anti-Semitism. “It was a painful experience without a doubt,” Cytron-Walker said in a statement on Sunday.
“We are resilient and we will recover,” he added.
A man who identified himself as Akram’s brother Gulbar said in a Facebook post that the suspect suffered from mental health issues.
“We would like to say that as a family we will not condone any of his actions and sincerely express our sincere apologies to all the victims involved in this unfortunate incident,” Gulba wrote on Blackburn’s Muslim Community Facebook page Road, in North West England – where British police say Akram came from.
Gulba added that he has been in touch with law enforcement in Texas and his family hopes to bring Akram’s body back to the UK for a funeral.
Biden declined to speculate on a motive, but appeared to confirm reports of hostage-taking seeking the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist known as “Ms al-Qaeda.”
“It was an act of terror perpetrated by an attacker,” Biden told reporters during a visit to a hunger relief organization in Philadelphia, apparently “in insisting on the release of a man who had been in prison for more than 10 years.”
British Foreign Minister Liz Strath on Sunday also condemned the hostage-taking as “an act of terrorism and anti-Semitism”.
Siddiqui, the first woman suspected of al-Qaeda ties by the United States and a celebrity in Pakistani and South Asian jihadist circles, was detained in Afghanistan in 2008.
Two years later, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison by a New York court for the attempted murder of a U.S. military officer in Afghanistan.
She is currently being held at a prison in Fort Worth, Texas — about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the synagogue attacked in Akram.
Siddiqui’s lawyer said she had “completely no involvement” in the hostage incident and condemned it.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
