WASHINGTON – One of the hostages kidnapped in a Texas synagogue was released this Saturday in good health after being held for more than six hours, while the FBI continued negotiating with the suspect, local police reported.
Shortly after 5: 00 pm, “a male hostage was released without injury,” and was expected to be reunited with his family “as soon as possible,” the Colleyville Police Department, a city located 43 kilometers (43 miles) to Northwest Dallas.
According to US officials quoted by CNN, ABC and NBC, the suspect claims to be the brother of Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, imprisoned in a US air base near Colleyville
The kidnapper asks for the release of his h Sister, serving a sentence of 86 years in prison for trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents while in detention in Afghanistan .
The hostage-taking occurred during a religious service in the synagogue of the Beth Israel congregation, which was being broadcast live on the institution’s website at Facebook, reported the local newspaper Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
More than 8,110 people connected to the video of the broadcast live once the first information emerged on social networks about what happened, until finally the broadcast was suspended without the situation inside the synagogue having been resolved.
The The video did not show what was happening inside the building, but it did show an angry man talking about religion, insisting that he did not want to hurt anyone, and claiming that was going to die, according to the Star-Telegram.
Before the video stopped broadcasting, what appeared to be negotiations over the phone between the suspect and the agents were heard , points to the rotary.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has received information about the situation in Colleyville and will keep an eye on the development of events in the next few hours, said its spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, on her Twitter account.
.@POTUS has been briefed about the developing hostage situation in the Dallas area. He will continue to receive updates from his senior team as the situation develops. Senior members of the national security team are also in touch with federal law enforcement leadership.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) January 15,
The Colleyville Police Department claimed on their Twitter account that they had an elite SWAT operations team deployed in the block where the synagogue is located, confirmed that he had evacuated the surrounding area and asked not to approach the area.
The event has caused police protection to be reinforced in several synagogues and Jewish institutions in large cities in the country, such as Dallas, New York or Los Angeles, California, to detect any possible anti-Semitic threat derived from what happened in Colleyville.