Terror probe past of synagogue gunman
Brother says Blackburn petty criminal turned fanatic was known to British security officers and asks: How COULD he make it into America?
SYNAGOGUE hostage taker Malik Faisal Akram was known to counter-terrorism police in Britain, his family revealed last night.
His brother demanded to know why the 44-year-old convicted criminal had been granted a visa to enter the US, where he took four people hostage at the weekend.
Gulbar Akram asked: ‘How did he get into America? How [did] he land at JFK [in New York] airport and not get stopped?’
MI5 and counter-terrorism police refused to discuss the case as questions mounted over why border checks failed to flag him up as potential extremist.
However, last night it emerged that police had attempted to contact the hostage-taker shortly before he travelled to New York.
Two detectives called at the end-terrace house in Blackburn where Akram had been living, neighbours said. ‘About three or four weeks ago, two detectives knocked at his door asking for him,’ said one.
It was not clear whether the attempted contact was connected to his plans to travel to the US just days later. While detectives in
‘It doesn’t take a PhD to kill somebody’
Britain investigating the Texas siege continued to question two teenagers arrested in Manchester last night, investigators around the world were urgently trying to establish whether Akram – who was shot dead after his hostages escaped – was operating as part of a wider organised plot.
He held four members of the congregation hostage while demanding the release of convicted terrorist, Aafia Siddiqui, known as ‘Lady Al Qaeda’. The authorities were trying to establish if there was a link between the two, though Siddiqui’s cause has been picked up by militants.
After being involved in petty crime as a young man, Akram had in recent years cut himself off from his moderate Muslim family’s ‘peaceful and tolerant’ faith and embraced fundamentalist forms of Islam.
According to his brother Gulbar, Akram spent six months in prison for violent disorder for wielding a baseball bat during a family feud with his cousins.
He became regarded as a ‘menace’ at the town’s magistrates court for hanging around abusing staff. As revealed in yesterday’s Daily Mail, the day after the 9/11 attacks he launched a shocking rant at a court usher, saying he wished he had died on one of the hijacked jets.
However Akram – who is understood to have married and lived in Manchester with his six children – later told a friend he had ‘found Allah’. He ceased to worship at his father’s mosque and began attending meetings of the Tablighi Jamaat group, set up to ‘purify’ Islam.
It is banned in Saudi Arabia as ‘one of the gates of terrorism’ although its 80million supporters worldwide insist its teachings are not linked to violence.
He was pictured at demonstrations for Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in support of Palestinian independence.
‘He became quite a religious guy,’ a neighbour said. ‘If he saw someone smoking he would tell them off.’
The second of six children, Malik Faisal Akram was born in Blackburn where his father, also Malik, served as president of a local mosque after emigrating from his native Pakistan.
Gulbar, 43 last night blamed the terror attack on his brother’s mental health struggles. He said he had been known to counter-terrorism police in Britain. ‘How had he gotten into America?’ he said. ‘Why was he granted a visa?’
Akram was not on a US government watchlist, a law enforcement source told CNN, with no ‘terrorrelated threat information’ found since the attack.
Evan Kohlmann, a counter terror expert at computer security service Flashpoint, said there would be questions in the US and the UK about ‘where the system broke down’. Commenting that Akram ‘obviously had a plan,’ he added: ‘It wouldn’t blow me away to find out he was recruited by Al Qaeda.’
‘There is a tendency to look on somebody like this and say he’s an idiot, there’s no way he was recruited, but that’s not realistic. It doesn’t take a PhD to kill somebody.’
Police and Whitehall sources refused to confirm whether he was known to officers or to MI5.