COLLEYVILLE, US: The rabbi of a Texas synagogue where a gunman took hostages during livestreamed services said Monday that he threw a chair at his captor before escaping with two others after an hourslong standoff, crediting past security training for getting himself and his congregants out safely.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker told “CBS Mornings” that he let the gunman inside the suburban Fort Worth synagogue Saturday because he appeared to need shelter. He said the man was not threatening or suspicious at first. Later, he heard a gun click as he was praying.
Another man held hostage, Jeffrey R. Cohen, described the ordeal on Facebook on Monday.
“First of all, we escaped. We weren’t released or freed,” said Cohen, who was one of four people in the synagogue for services that many other Congregation Beth Israel members were watching online.
Cohen said the men worked to keep the gunman engaged. They talked to the gunman, he lectured them. At one point as the situation devolved, Cohen said the gunman told them to get on their knees. Cohen recalled rearing up in his chair and slowly moving his head and mouthing “no.” As the gunman moved to sit back down, Cohen said Cytron-Walker yelled to run.
“The exit wasn’t too far away,” Cytron-Walker said. “I told them to go. I threw a chair at the gunman, and I headed for the door. And all three of us were able to get out without even a shot being fired.”
Authorities identified the hostage-taker as 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram, who was killed Saturday night after the last three hostages ran out of the synagogue in Colleyville around 9 p.m. The first hostage was released shortly after 5 p.m.
The FBI on Sunday night issued a statement calling the ordeal “a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted” and said the Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating. The agency noted that Akram spoke repeatedly during negotiations about a prisoner who is serving an 86-year sentence in the US The statement followed comments Saturday from the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office that the hostage-taker was focused on an issue “not specifically related to the Jewish community.”
Akram could be heard ranting on a Facebook livestream of the services and demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist suspected of having ties to Al-Qaeda who was convicted of trying to kill US Army officers in Afghanistan.
“The last hour or so of the standoff, he wasn’t getting what he wanted. It didn’t look good. It didn’t sound good. We were terrified,” Cytron-Walker told “CBS Mornings.”
At a service held Monday evening at a nearby Methodist church, Cytron-Walker said the amount of “well-wishes and kindness and compassion” has been been overwhelming.
“Thank you for all of the compassion, from the bottom of my heart,” Cytron-Walker said.
“While very few of us are doing OK right now, we’ll get through this,” he said.
Video of the standoff’s end from Dallas TV station WFAA showed people running out a door of the synagogue, and then a man holding a gun opening the same door just seconds later before he turned around and closed it. Moments later, several shots and then an explosion could be heard.
Authorities have declined to say who shot Akram, saying it was still under investigation.
The investigation stretched to England, where late Sunday police in Manchester announced that two teenagers were in custody in connection with the standoff. Greater Manchester Police tweeted that counter-terrorism officers had made the arrests but did not say whether the pair faced any charges.
President Joe Biden called the episode an act of terror. Speaking to reporters in Philadelphia on Sunday, Biden said Akram allegedly purchased a weapon on the streets.
Federal investigators believe Akram purchased the handgun used in the hostage-taking in a private sale, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Akram arrived in the US at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York about two weeks ago, a law enforcement official said.
Akram arrived in the US on a tourist visa from Great Britain, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended to be public. London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that its counter-terrorism police were liaising with US authorities about the incident.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel told the House of Commons on Monday that she had spoken to her US counterpart, Alejandro Mayorkas, and offered “the full support” of the police and security services in Britain in the investigation.
Akram used his phone during the course of negotiations to communicate with people other than law enforcement, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
It wasn’t clear why Akram chose the synagogue, though the prison where Siddiqui is serving her sentence is in Fort Worth.
An attorney in Texas who represents Siddiqui said Monday that Siddiqui had no connections to Akram.
“She said from the beginning when she was sentenced that she does not want any violence done in her name and she doesn’t condone any type of violence being done,” said attorney Marwa Elbially.
Akram, who was called Faisal by his family, was from Blackburn, an industrial city in northwest England. His family said he’d been “suffering from mental health issues.”
“We would also like to add that any attack on any human being, be it a Jew, Christian or Muslim, etc. is wrong and should always be condemned,” his brother, Gulbar Akram, wrote.
Community organizer Asif Mahmud, who has known the family for 30 years and attends the same mosque, said the family was devastated by what happened in Texas.
He “had mental health issues for a number of years,” Mahmud said. “The family obviously were aware of that … but nobody envisaged he would potentially go and do something like this.”
Mohammed Khan, leader of the local government council in Blackburn, said the community promotes peace across all faiths.
“Ours is a town where people from different backgrounds, cultures and faiths are welcomed, and it is a place where people get along and support one another,’’ Khan said in a statement.
Texas rabbi says he, 2 hostages escaped synagogue standoff
https://arab.news/vug6r
Texas rabbi says he, 2 hostages escaped synagogue standoff
- Hostage-taker Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British national, was killed Saturday night after the last three hostages ran out of the synagogue in Colleyville
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Gunman jailed for life in killing of Japan ex-PM Abe
- Shinzo Abe was serving as a regular lawmaker after leaving the prime minister’s job when he was killed in 2022
NARA, Japan: The gunman charged with killing Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe was found guilty and jailed for life Wednesday, more than three years after the broad-daylight assassination shocked the world.
The shooting forced a reckoning in a country with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church.
Judge Shinichi Tanaka handed down the sentence at a court in the city of Nara.
A queue of people waited Wednesday morning to get tickets to enter the courtroom, highlighting intense public interest in the trial.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, faced charges including murder and firearms control law violations for using a handmade gun to kill Japan’s longest-serving leader during his campaign speech in July 2022.
As the trial opened in October, Yamagami admitted to murder. He contested some of the other charges, media reports said.
Under Japan’s legal system, a trial continues even if a defendant admits guilt.
Manabu Kawashima, a logistics worker who was waiting outside court, said he wanted “to know the truth about Yamagami.”
“What happened to former prime minister Abe was the incident of the century. And I liked him while he was alive. His death was shocking,” the 31-year-old told AFP.
“I’m here because I wanted to know about the man who killed someone I cared about.”
Another man outside court held a banner urging the judge to take Yamagami’s difficult life circumstances “into the fullest consideration.”
Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Yamagami, calling the murder “unprecedented in our post-war history” and citing the “extremely serious consequences” it had on society, according to local media.
The Japanese version of life imprisonment leaves open the possibility of parole, although in reality, experts say many die while incarcerated.
At the trial opening, prosecutors argued that the defendant’s motive to kill Abe was rooted in his desire to besmirch the Unification Church.
The months-long trial highlighted how his mother’s blind donations to the Church plunged his family into bankruptcy and how he came to believe “influential politicians” were helping the sect thrive.
Abe had spoken at events organized by some of the church groups.
Yamagami “thought if he killed someone as influential as former prime minister Abe, he could draw public attention to the Church and fuel public criticism of it,” a prosecutor told a district court in western Japan’s Nara region in October.
The Unification Church was established in South Korea in 1954, with its members nicknamed “Moonies” after its founder Sun Myung Moon.
In a plea for leniency, his defense team stressed his upbringing had been mired in “religious abuse” stemming from his mother’s extreme faith in the Unification Church.
In despair after the suicide of her husband, and with her other son gravely ill, Yamagami’s mother poured all her assets into the Church to “salvage” her family, Yamagami’s lawyer said, adding that her donations eventually snowballed to around 100 million yen ($1 million at the time).
Yamagami was forced to give up pursuing higher education. In 2005, he attempted to take his own life before his brother died by suicide.
Investigations after Abe’s murder led to cascading revelations about close ties between the Church and many conservative lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, prompting four ministers to resign.
In 2020, Yamagami began hand-crafting a lethal firearm, a process that involved meticulous test-firing sessions in a remote mountainous area.
This points to the highly “premeditated” nature of his attack on Abe, prosecutors say.
The assassination was also a wake-up call for a nation which has some of the world’s strictest gun controls.
Gun violence is so rare in Japan that security officials at the scene failed to immediately identify the sound made by the first shot, and came to Abe’s rescue too late, a police report after the attack said.
