The FBI Stops, Then Muffs, Jihadist Hostage-Taking at a Texas Synagogue

T hese days, even when its agents do a great job, the FBI still manages to shoot itself in the foot.

Saturday should be regarded as a great bureau success. With valor and skill, the agency’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) managed to end a hostage-taking siege in a synagogue on the outskirts of Fort Worth. For hours there, at Congregation Beth Israel of Colleyville, Texas, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three congregation members were held hostage by an armed jihadist, Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British national.

The agents shot and killed the gunman, and no harm was done to any of the hostages (one of whom had been released by Akram at 5 p.m., four hours before the HRT operation). The bureau would of course have preferred to take the jihadist alive, but that was not an option under the increasingly tense circumstances. The rescue operation went about as well as it could go. But, alas, then came the public messaging.

Matthew DeSarno, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office, held a press conference at which he stated, “We do believe from our engagement with this subject [Akram, whom the FBI was not yet referring to by name at the time] that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community.”

DeSarno had a point to make, but could he possibly have phrased it more foolishly?

Clearly, Akram’s attack was specifically related to the Jewish community. In entering the country legally just prior to New Year’s Day, he had told immigration authorities that he’d be staying at a nondescript hotel on Queens Boulevard, close to JFK International Airport. Two weeks later, he was taking hostages 1,600 miles away. There are millions of places where he could have taken hostages between Queens and Fort Worth; he specifically chose to take hostages in a synagogue. That was a natural choice because jihadism seethes with antisemitism.

But what agent DeSarno was trying to convey in his tin-eared way was that Akram’s main objective was not to besiege synagogues. There are more synagogues in the New York area, where Akram had originally been staying, than anyplace else in the country. Obviously, there are also hundreds of synagogues along the way from New York City to Texas. If attacking Jewish houses of worship was Akram’s principal aim, he would not have chosen a synagogue in Colleyville.

Akram chose that synagogue because he needed a target in the Fort Worth area. This was because his goal was to pressure federal authorities to release another jihadist, Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-educated scientist from Pakistan.

Siddiqui is incarcerated in Fort Worth, at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, which — the New York Times reports — is just 24 miles southwest of Congregation Beth Israel. While holding the hostages, Akram expressly demanded that the U.S. government release Siddiqui. Indeed, for a time on Saturday, press reports suggested that Akram might be Siddiqui’s brother — he is not, but I suspect the confusion was caused by the jihadist custom of referring to one another as “brother” or “sister,” usually signaling ideological rather than biological affinity.

After the 9/11 attacks, Siddiqui moved to Pakistan and provided material support to the Taliban. She split with her husband and eventually married Ammar al-Baluchi, a suspected al-Qaeda operative who is the nephew of the terror network’s 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. U.S. investigators believed Siddiqui was complicit in a plot, attributed to a KSM-led cell, to carry out terrorist attacks in the West and in Pakistan. That background is why tabloid coverage often brands her “Lady al-Qaeda.” She eventually was captured in Ghazni, Afghanistan. There, she swiped a soldier’s rifle, which she used to shoot at American troops who were detaining her. She was disarmed and ultimately convicted of attempted murder. She is thus serving an 86-year prison term imposed by a federal court in 2010.

Some weekend reporting noted that Siddiqui has long been a cause célèbre in Islamist circles. As I have observed over the years, freeing imprisoned terrorists is one of the highest priorities of jihadist organizations, and it has motivated many terrorist atrocities over the years. Those who carry out these acts are regarded as heroes (or martyrs, as the case may be). Akram wanted to join this pantheon.

It makes perfect sense, then, that his plot would include taking Jewish hostages at a synagogue near the place where Siddiqui was detained: Jihadists deem Jews their enemies; they frequently plot attacks against Jewish targets; and Akram must have calculated that, if he was holding hostages nearby, the feds could be persuaded to bring Siddiqui to him, and he could then barter for his and Siddiqui’s escape by offering to release the hostages. As is usually the case in these scenarios, the fact that the plan had no chance of success does not mean some jihadist won’t try it.

President Biden rightly branded the incident a terrorist attack — the “man-caused disaster” nonsense of the Obama/Biden administration was not invoked. Still, after all these years, the FBI remains too indulgent of Islamist sensitivities.

Because the bureau pays too much attention to Islamist organizations (which falsely purport to be the voice of Muslim Americans generally), agents — especially bosses who want to advance in the FBI — go out of their way to avoid saying anything that might be taken to attribute antisemitism to Muslims. But I don’t think DeSarno meant to imply that Akram had randomly chosen to take hostages at a synagogue, as opposed to, say, a McDonald’s. In his clumsy way, he was trying to convey that Akram’s narrow objective was to extort the government to release Siddiqui, and that the bureau does not believe either that there are other conspirators involved, or that there is an ongoing terrorist plot to target American synagogues for hostage-taking.

But how about we try just saying that?