The terrorist that held four people hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, supposedly slipped through cracks, according to authorities.
Somehow, a terrorist with a criminal history who had been on the radar of anti-terror cops in the UK was allowed entrance into the United States via a tourist visa. Authorities are now trying to downplay the mistake as simply an “intelligence failure.”
This massive failure on the part of counterterrorism officials is fueling frustration among the American people. Even worse, people have begun to realize that the failure comes from two different locations: the UK for allowing the terrorist to leave the country without warning, and the U.S. for allowing the terrorist to enter the country.
Malik Faisal Akram took a rabbi and three members of his congregation hostage. During the ordeal, he “spoke repeatedly about a convicted terrorist who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the United States,” the FBI said in a statement.
The terrorist he was referring to was Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani with a PhD in neuroscience who is serving a federal prison sentence in Fort Worth, Texas for attempted murder and several other charges for an assault on U.S. officers in Afghanistan.
In the end, the hostages were able to escape after the rabbi threw a chair at the terrorist. Law enforcement was then able to enter the building and take the terrorist down. None of the hostages were harmed. Akram was killed by law enforcement.
“And so there was a chair that was right in front of me. I told the guys to go, I picked it up and I threw it at him with all the adrenaline,” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said. “It was absolutely terrifying and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be shot, and I did not hear a shot fired as I made it out the door. I was the last one out.”
Despite being known to MI5, the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, Akram was able to fly into New York City from the UK on January 22nd without any red flags or being named on any “no-fly lists.”
“As police in the US and UK scramble to discover if he was part of a wider terror cell, it has emerged that Malik Faisal Akram, 44, from Blackburn, Lancashire, was branded a ‘menace’ for raving about the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001,” the Daily Mail reports.
“The terror suspect was given a rare Exclusion Order at Blackburn’s magistrates’ court – the first in 25 years – for abusing staff about 9/11 on the day after the attack that claimed more than 2,750 lives,” the outlet added.
Akram’s brother also revealed that the terrorist had previously been arrested in the 1990s when he was 19 for wielding a baseball bat during a domestic dispute with his cousins.
Response
There was an uproar on both sides of the pond over the failure of the intelligence agencies in preventing the terrorist from entering the United States.
“This is clearly a failure of intelligence sharing. It is absolutely dreadful that he has been allowed to go to the States and hurt people. Clearly something has gone wrong somewhere,” said Tory MP Bob Seely.
Donald Trump Jr. was especially frustrated, sending out a tweet blasting the FBI for their failure.
“How long did the FBI know a radical Islamist foreign national with a criminal record was in the country? Were they working with him or his associates? How did this person get a visa? Did he slip through the cracks because they were too busy surveilling your conservative grandma?” he wrote.
How long did the FBI know a radical Islamist foreign national with a criminal record was in the country? Were they working with him or his associates? How did this person get a visa? Did he slip through the cracks because they were too busy surveilling your conservative grandma?
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 17, 2022
