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Texas Synagogue Terrorist Said in 2021 He Wanted to Kill Jews, Report Says

The Jewish Chronicle (JC) reported on January 20 Malik Faisal Akram, who held four hostages at gunpoint inside a synagogue in Colleyville, TX, on January 15, said in 2021 that he wanted to kill Jews.
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January 20, 2022
Police cars at Good Shepherd Catholic Community church on January 15, 2022 in Colleyville, Texas. (Photo by Emil Lippe/Getty Images)

The Jewish Chronicle (JC) reported on January 20 Malik Faisal Akram, who held four hostages at gunpoint inside a synagogue in Colleyville, TX, on January 15, said in 2021 that he wanted to kill Jews.

The JC report stated that Akram, 44, uttered those remarks during a May 2021 councillor meeting discussing the conflict between Israel and Hamas at the time. Akram is said to have called for Jews to be “bombed” as punishment for the conflict, according to The JC. A councillor at the meeting told The JC that he reported it to the police but nothing was done about it.

“The only shock was that he went so far, to the [United States], to execute his views,” the councillor said. “My worry was that he would do something stupid in this country and will bring a bad name to the whole community.”

The police declined to comment on the allegation to The JC.

Various reports have stated that Akram was on MI5’s radar prior to the hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel. He was reportedly put on MI5’s “subject of interest” watchlist toward the end of 2020 for more than four weeks as a potential Islamist terror threat, but was eventually taken off the list. Akram also has a record of prior arrests involving violent disorder, property destruction, harassment and theft and was barred from a British court after allegedly telling a court usher “you should have been on the f—ing plane,” an apparent reference to the 9/11 terror attacks.

Audio of Akram’s last phone call to his brother, Gulbar, was obtained by The JC, where Akram can be heard saying that maybe the U.S. will “have compassion for f—ing Jews, but guess what? I’m opening the doors for every f—ing youngster in England to know, live your f—ing life, bro, you f—ing coward. We’re coming to f—ing America and f— with them. If they want to f— with us, we’ll give them f—ing war.”

More details have also emerged as to what took place during the hostage crisis on January 15. The JC reported that Akram had initially shown up to the synagogue that morning asking for help; Congregation Beth Israel Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker invited him in, and they conversed over tea. The Shabbat morning service proceeded as usual until after the Amidah prayer, at which point Akram pulled out his gun and started making demands for Pakistani neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to be released. Siddiqui, known as “the Lady of Al-Qaeda,” has been serving an 86-year prison sentence since 2010 for attempting to kill U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan; she is currently being held in a federal prison in the Fort Worth area. Akram told the hostages that he targeted them because “President [Joe] Biden will do things for the Jews.” At one point he railed about “about Israel and Palestine, threatening to kill the hostages because America only cares about Jews, Jews control the media and Jews control the world,” according to The JC. The hostages eventually escaped when Cytron-Walker threw a chair at him, giving the hostages the opportunity to run to the exit.

The Algemeiner reported that a few days before the attack, Akram became “agitated” after the Islamic Center of Irving would not let him sleep there for the night; the mosque forced him to leave. He came back the next day and apologized. “Thank God that he didn’t shoot anybody or do anything bad at our place,” Khalid Hamideh, the mosque’s spokesperson, told CNN. “I am shocked that he did not do something like this at our mosque because they said he was really agitated the first day.”

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