Malik Faisal Akram: Texas siege hostage taker was investigated by MI5

The Texas siege hostage taker shot dead by the FBI was investigated by MI5 just over a year ago, but deemed to present no terrorist threat, it has emerged.

Sources said that Malik Faisal Akram, 44, who held a Jewish rabbi and worshippers during an 1-hour armed stand-off, had been the subject of a “short” probe by spies during the second half of 2020 after a tip off about his potential danger.

No further evidence beyond the “one uncorroborated piece of evidence” was found, however, and the investigation into him was closed.

He was not placed on a flight warning list, which might have prevented him from entering the US, because as one of the tens of thousands of “closed subjects of interest” for MI5 because, sources said, it would not have been proportionate or lawful.

Police and spies are now examining whether any further evidence that might have allowed them to discover Akram’s apparent obsession with “Lady al Qaeda” – the female Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui whose release he was heard demanding during the siege – and his potential threat might have been missed in the months following the earlier probe into him.

Tuesday’s disclosure came as counter-terrorism police continued to question two teenagers held in south Manchester following the siege in at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in the Dallas suburb of Colleyville.

Akram, 44, from Blackburn, who had flown to the US a fortnight earlier, was, according to his brother Gulbar, speaking to his children when he was shot dead by armed FBI officers who stormed the synagogue to end the siege moments after several hostages fled pursued briefly by a man, thought to be Akram, carrying a gun.

Earlier Akram had been heard on a live stream audio ranting and shouting that he had a bomb and was going to die.

Friends and family have said that he had mental health problems and a criminal record, which is understood to have included convictions for an assault connected to a drug deal, violent disorder and driving offences.

US President Joe Biden described his attack on the synagogue as an “act of terror” and that Akram, who stayed in a homeless hostel before going to the synagogue, appeared to have bought a handgun “on the street” once in the US.

Aafia Siddiqui, whose release he was demanding, is serving an 8-year sentence in the US for trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan by grabbing an M4 rifle and opening fire while she was being questioned at Kabul airport over jihadist fundraising and organising activities. She was the only person injured after suffering a shot to the stomach as she was brought under control.