Hostages held Saturday for nearly 11 hours at a Texas synagogue managed to escape unharmed after the temple rabbi threw a chair into the kidnapper, who was later shot dead by the authorities.
This was revealed on Monday by the rabbi of the synagogue of the Beth Israel congregation, Charlie Cytron-Walker, who was kidnapped along with three other hostages in an event that US President Joe Biden has described as an “act of terrorism”.
“It was terrifying. It was overwhelming and we are still processing it,” Cytron-Walker said in an interview with CBS News.
The rabbi claimed that he himself let the suspect, identified by the FBI as British citizen Malik Faisal Akram, into the synagogue on Saturday morning before the start of the Shabbat religious service.
Thinking that Akram was simply looking for a place to shelter on a cold morning, the rabbi made him a cup of hot tea and let him stay in the service of that Saturday, which was barely attended by three other people and which was broadcast live on Facebook.
At a time when his back was to the audience, the rabbi heard the noise of a click and thought that “it could be a gun,” he assured in another interview this Monday with The New York Times.
While the others were praying, the rabbi approached Akram and told him he could go if he wanted, at which point the man pointed a firearm at him.
Cytron-Walker, who had recently received training on how to deal with a threat from someone armed, said he tried to “remain calm ” in the room in the hours that followed, while the suspect “raved” and began telephone negotiations with the FBI.
The kidnapper’s objective was to obtain the release of the Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who She is serving a sentence of
years in prison in Texas for having tried to kill US soldiers and agents while she was detained in Afghanistan.
By mid-afternoon, the rabbi managed to calm Akram enough to allow the release of one of the hostages, but later he became more belligerent in his conversations with the FBI and began “screaming and threatening more,” Cytron-Walker told the New York Times.
Another of the hostages was the vice president e of the synagogue, Jeffrey Cohen, who explained this Monday on Facebook that, thanks to the security training they had received, they were able to apply a series of strategies that “saved” their lives.
When Akram He asked him to sit down, he chose a row with clear access to the exit, and he managed to transmit clues to all the hostages so that they gradually moved to places closer to the door, he said.
As the negotiations dragged on, the rabbi noted in his interview with CBS News, he realized that Akram “wasn’t getting what he wanted” and could become violent.
“I told them (the other hostages) to leave, I threw a chair at the man armed and ran to the door. And the three of us managed to get out without even a shot being fired,” the rabbi said.
Cohen stressed in his Facebook message that he and the other hostages “escaped,” and denied that they were released” by the authorities.
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