The 44-year-old British national has been identified by the FBI as the kidnapper in the Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis.
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MI5 had concluded that there was no threat. The Briton who took four people hostage this weekend in a synagogue in the United States had been the subject of an investigation by the internal intelligence service in 2020, British media said on Tuesday January 18.
According to these media, which cite government sources, information communicated to MI5 had triggered, during the second half of 2020, the opening of an investigation into Malik Faisal Akram which had been closed a little more than a month later.
She had estimated that“there was no indication that he posed a terrorist threat at the time”, according to a source quoted by the daily The Telegraph.
This 44-year-old British national was identified by the FBI, the American federal police, as the kidnapper of the hostage-taking in a synagogue in Colleyville, a city of approximately 23,000 inhabitants located about forty kilometers from Dallas, in Texas.
He was killed in the police raid on Saturday while the four hostages were all released unharmed. According to Sky News, Malik Faisal Akram, who lived in Blackburn, in the north of England, had arrived in the United States just before the New Year via JFK airport in New York, before buying the weapon used during hostage taking.
The television channel also points out that he had been imprisoned four times between 1996 and 2012, in particular for disturbing public order, harassment and theft.