DALLAS (Washington Insider Magazine) – The Justice Department announced Wednesday that a Texas individual has been charged with providing a pistol to the guy who took 4 captives inside a Texas synagogue earlier this January before being gunned down by the FBI.
Authorities allege Henry “Michael” Williams sold the handgun used by Maisal Faisal Akram when he stormed Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on January 15 and kept the synagogue’s rabbi and three people hostage for hours.
Akram, a 44-year-old British national, took hostages in a Dallas suburb in exchange for the freedom of a federal inmate. When the temple’s rabbi flung a piece of furniture at Akram and escaped with the other 2 surviving hostages as an FBI combat unit was going in, the showdown concluded after more than ten hours.
Officials stated Akram was demanding the freedom of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist guilty of attempting to assassinate US troops in Afghanistan and serving a lengthy prison sentence in a prison near Colleyville, according to the captives.
British police announced earlier Wednesday that they have arrested two more men in connection with the hostage-taking crisis at a Texas synagogue earlier this January.
Two guys were apprehended in Manchester, England, according to the counter-terrorism force policing North West. They were being detained for questioning, but no charges have been filed yet.
The two men’s identities were withheld by the police agency. Detainees’ names and identities are not released by British police until they have been charged.
As part of the ongoing investigation, British police arrested two suspects in the locations of Birmingham and Manchester on January 20. According to NBC News, the men were dismissed and no further action was taken against them.
Two British adolescents were seized and cleared of all charges earlier in Manchester.
According to reports, Akram was probed by MI5, the UK’s national security agency, in the 2nd half of 2020, but was not deemed a significant threat at the time.
