Texas synagogue hostage taker explains his actions prior to death

In an expletive-laden phone call, the brother of Malik Faisal Akram urged the 42-year-old to surrender as he held four people hostage in a synagogue in Texas on Saturday.

The chilling phone call, obtained and published by the Jewish Chronicle on Wednesday evening, captures the last conversation between Akram and his brother, Gulbar Akram, who spoke to him from a police station in Blackburn.

In the call, the gunman tells his brother that he’s got four people hostage and has been surrounded by police. Among a number of anti-Semitic remarks, he claims to have “promised” his younger brother “on his deathbed” that he would “go down a martyr.”

It is understood that one of their younger brothers died from Covid-19 three months ago. 

“Don’t cry at my funeral. Because guess what, I’ve come to die, G, OK?” he tells Gulbar. 

In the barely coherent rant, during which Akram’s mental state appears to decline, he blasts American foreign policy and the country’s intervention in Afghanistan, claiming, “I’m setting a precedent.”

He says he believes his terrorism will “[open] the doors for every youngster in England to enter America and f**k with them.”

Despite Gulbar’s pleas, Akram says he has been “praying to Allah for two years for this,” and that “I’d rather live one day as a lion than 100 years as a jackal.”

Dismissing his brother’s protests, he descends further into his rant and repeatedly references convicted Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, imprisoned in nearby Fort Worth. He appears to suggest Siddiqui could be brought to him and they could die together, referencing her 86-year prison sentence. 

“They’ll never take another woman from a Muslim,” he adds. 

Gulbar later told Sky News Akram was on the phone with his two teenage children when he was killed by an FBI SWAT team 10 hours into the standoff.

The four hostages were unharmed.