Adir Krafman / Twitter.com
Two men have been arrested in Birmingham and Manchester as part of the investigation into the Texas synagogue attack by the British hostage-taker Malik Faisal Akram. The men, whose ages have not been released, were “in custody for questioning”, Greater Manchester police (GMP) said, and were held on Thursday morning as part of an “ongoing investigation”.
Akram, a 44-year-old from Blackburn, was shot dead by the FBI following a 10-hour standoff on Saturday in Colleyville, near Dallas. All four hostages at the Congregation Beth Israel were released or escaped unharmed, in what US President Joe Biden branded as “an act of terror”.
The synagogue’s Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker was among the hostages and has been widely praised for remaining calm throughout the crisis; managing to get the other hostages close to an exit before throwing a chair at Akram, giving them the opportunity to escape. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss described the attack as an “act of terrorism and Antisemitism”, adding: “We stand with US in defending the rights and freedoms of our citizens against those who spread hate”.
Audio footage obtained by the Jewish Chronicle showed a final conversation between Akram and his younger brother Gulbar, in which the armed 44-year-old was urged to surrender by his sibling.
The 11-and-a-half minute long recording includes boasts of martyrdom and anger about American conflicts overseas.
The attacker, who had gained entry to the synagogue by posing as a homeless man, claimed that he was heavily armed. He repeatedly demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist suspected of having ties to al Qaeda who was convicted of trying to kill US troops in Afghanistan. The audio ends shortly before the hostages ran out of the synagogue and Akram died in bullet-fire fired by an FBI SWAT team.
Earlier in the week it was revealed Akram had been under investigation by MI5 as a possible Islamist terrorist threat as recently as 2020. Separately, two teenagers arrested in Manchester following the incident were released without charge on Tuesday.
