The man who took four people hostage in a Texas synagogue on Saturday was investigated more than a year ago by a British counterintelligence agency, which reportedly concluded he posed no threat.
The United Kingdom’s security agency, MI5, investigated Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British national, as a “possible Islamist terrorist threat” in the second half of 2020 and cleared him, saying there was “no reason to prevent him from traveling abroad,” the Guardian reported Tuesday.
On Saturday, Akram held four people hostage inside Beth Israel Congregation in Colleyville, Texas, while demanding the release of a Pakistani woman serving an 86-year sentence for shooting at U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.
Akram referred to the woman, neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, as his “sister.” But John Floyd, Siddiqui’s lawyer, told the Daily News Sunday that Akram has “no connection with the family whatsoever” and “he has also no connection to the Free Aafia movement inside the U.S.”
Akram’s family said Sunday that he was “suffering from mental health issues.”
In 2001, Akram was banned from Blackburn Magistrates Court, the local legal system, after telling a court usher that he wished he had been on one of the planes hijacked on 9/11, according to the Guardian.
All four hostages were freed unharmed Saturday, including the final three after Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker threw a chair at Akram and ran for the exit.
Akram was dead when agents breached the temple in Colleyville, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Both President Biden and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have condemned the hostage-taking as terrorism.
The FBI has said Akram acted alone, but British police announced Sunday that two teenagers in South Manchester had been taken into custody for questioning by counterterrorism officers. They have not been publicly identified, and their connections to Akram were unclear.
