The four hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas all escaped unharmed. Little is yet known about the suspected captor, a 44-year British national named Malik Faisal Akram, who was killed after FBI agents stormed the building.
A nearly 11-hour hostage standoff at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, near Fort Worth ended on Saturday night when an FBI SWAT team stormed the house of worship and rescued the hostages. The male captor — a 44-year-old British national named Malik Faisal Akram who reportedly said he sought the release of a Pakistani woman with suspected ties to al Qaeda from a federal prison in Texas — was killed. President Biden called the incident an “act of terror” on Sunday. Below is what he know about the still-developing story. During the Sabbath morning service on Saturday at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, an armed man — later identified as Malik Faisal Akram — entered the Reform synagogue and took four people hostage at gunpoint, including Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker. Colleyville Police responded after receiving a call about the incident at 10:41 a.m. Roughly 200 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers ultimately arrived on the scene, and residents in the surrounding neighborhood were evacuated. Hostage negotiators spoke with Akram, who said he had both firearms and explosives, repeatedly throughout the day. The service, which began at 10 a.m., was being livestreamed on Facebook. In the sometimes inaudible audio from the livestream, which did not show what was happening in the synagogue, an angry man could be heard ranting about various subjects including dying, not liking the police, and religion.
