Malik Faisal Akram, the captor who held four hostages in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, had warned that he had hundreds of bullets while threatening hostages. The British national was killed after a 10-hour standoff with the FBI and other authorities. All the captives, including a rabbi, were safe.
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Akram’s father revealed the details of his phone calls with family friends. Talking to MailOnline, he said that his son had ‘destroyed his own life and the lives of his family too.’
“What my son has done, I have no words to explain it or to understand what he did and why he did it. It came as the biggest shock of my life when I heard he was in America and in a synagogue,” father Malik Akram said in urdu.
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“When I heard this, I thought somebody was having a joke. He has destroyed himself and he has destroyed us. My wife has not stopped crying,” he added.
The father then went on to say that Malik Faisal Akram had phoned home several times during the siege. He ranted about the US war in Afghanistan and threatened that he was armed and had ‘hundreds of bullets’.
Akram arrived in the U.S. at Kennedy Airport in New York on a tourist visa about two weeks ago, officials said. He spent time in Dallas-area homeless shelters before the attack Saturday in the suburb of Colleyville.
Akram was not believed to be included in the Terrorist Screening Database, a listing of known or suspected terrorists maintained by the FBI and shared with a variety of federal agencies, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. Had he been included, it would have been extremely difficult for him to get into the country.
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Akram held extreme views that led to a failed marriage, a close family friend told Daily Mail. He further added that the Texas captor was a controlling husband and had no regular job or income.
“He was very controlling towards his wife who he married in Jhelum, Pakistan around 2004. He forced his wife to wear the Purdah and would not let her out of his sight he even went to the GP with her if she had an appointment. He argued with his family over their lifestyles and things like the men’s beards not being in line with what he saw as Islamic requirements. He wished for a Caliphate Britain,” the source said.
