The FBI cites Malik Faisal Akram, 44, as the man who arrested four people for 10 hours in a U.S. state of Texas.
U.S. authorities have identified a 44-year-old British national who arrested four people captured at a synagogue in Texas 10 hours before the FBI SWAT team demolished the building, ending a dispute that President Joe Biden called “dangerous.”
The FBI has identified the man as Malik Faisal Akram, 44, who was killed after a successful release of his captives on Saturday night.
In a statement, the FBI said there was no sign of anyone. It did not give a reason for having a conspiracy.
The FBI and police spokesman refused to answer questions Saturday night about who shot Akram when the suspension at Beth Israel Church near Fort Worth ended.
Akram was heard crying on Facebook livestream for services and demanding the release of a Pakistani scientist convicted of plotting to assassinate US troops in Afghanistan.
A video from Dallas TV station WFAA showed people running out of the synagogue door, and then a man with a shotgun opened the same door a few seconds before turning and closing it. Shortly thereafter, several gunshots were heard, and then a bomb exploded.
What happened in Colleyville, Texas, was “horrific,” said Biden, who was in Philadelphia with First Lady Jill Biden to honor the legacy of the assassinated human rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“Obviously – I don’t have all the facts, and the attorney general doesn’t know – but he says he said he had weapons on the street,” Biden said.
“He bought it when it landed and it looks like there were no bombs we know of … It seems he stayed the first night in an empty house. I didn’t know everything, so I don’t want to elaborate,” he said.
FBI Special Investigator Matt DeSarno said the detainee was simply looking into an issue that had nothing to do with the Jewish gang, and there was no indication that the man was part of any other plan. But DeSarno said the agency’s research would “reach the whole world”.
It is not clear why Akram chose the synagogue.
Police were first called to the synagogue around 11am and people were evacuated after the incident, FBI Dallas spokeswoman Katie Chaumont said.
The FBI Hostage Rescue Team on Saturday night stormed a synagogue, settling a 10-hour dispute with police and the gunman, who disrupted a Sabbath meeting and arrested a rabbi and three other people.
One detainee was released unharmed after being detained for six hours and the remaining three were successfully released by the FBI.
On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned the arrest in a synagogue as “terrorist and anti-Semitism”.
“We stand with the US to protect the rights and freedoms of our citizens from those who spread hatred,” Truss wrote on Twitter.
The arrests of Texas people seem strange, but synagogues in New York and elsewhere throughout the country have increased security in response.
