Texas Synagogue Attack: Who Is Pak National Aafia Siddiqui, Whose Release Was Demanded By Hostage-Taker

Siddiqui is a Pakistani scientist, who is serving an 86-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of shooting at soldiers and FBI agents in 2010 .

Supporters of US-detained Pakistani woman Aafia Siddiqui, whose portrait is displayed in a cage, take a part in an anti-US demonstration in Karachi on March 7, 2010. | (File Photo/ Getty Images)

New Delhi: In more than 10 hours of siege, a gunman was killed after he held four people hostage at a Texas synagogue on Saturday. The suspect has been reportedly demanding the release of a Pakistani-born scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving a federal prison sentence in the Dallas-Forth Worth area, according to the news agency Reuters.

Identified as Malik Faisal Akram, the FBI said the gunman is a citizen of the United Kingdom but did reveal much on how and when he entered the United States, according to the agency.

The suspect has been heard ranting in a live stream asking for the release of the neuroscientist suspected of Al-Qaeda links, who was convicted of trying to kill US Army officers in Afghanistan.

Who’s Aafia Siddiqui?

Even as all four hostages were released unharmed and the suspect dead, it was not clear if the gunman took his own life or was killed by members of the FBI hostage rescue team. The gunman claimed to be the brother of Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui demanded that she be freed, quoted the report according to the US official who spoke to ABC News.

Siddiqui is a Pakistani scientist, who is serving an 86-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of shooting at soldiers and FBI agents in 2010, according to an AP report.

Siddiqui is held up at a federal medical lockup in the Fort Worth area. On the other hand, a lawyer representing Siddiqui, Marwa Elbially denied any link to the suspect saying that the suspect was not Siddiqui's brother and the family condemned his "heinous" actions.

The scientist has received advanced degrees from Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Siddiqui is perhaps the first woman to be suspected of Al-Qaeda links by the US, but never convicted of it. She travelled to the US to be with her brother at the age of 18 to study at Boston's prestigious MI.T

She came under the watch after the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001 for donations to Islamic organisations and was linked to the purchase of $10,000 worth of night-vision goggles and books on warfare.

It was suspected that she had joined Al-Qaeda from America after returning to Pakistan where she got married into the family of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an architect of the 9/11 attacks, according to the report.

Soon she disappeared in around 2003, along with her three children, in Karachi. After five years later she again emerged in Pakistan's war-torn neighbour Afghanistan, where local forces arrested her in the restive southeastern province of Ghazni.

In 2019, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison on charges of assault and shooting at US Army officers. The punishment sparked uproar in Pakistan among political quarters and her supporters, who believed that she was victimized by the American criminal justice system.

It is to be noted that Pakistan officials went on to express interest publicly in any sort of deal or swap that may led to her release from US custody. Her case continued to draw attention from supporters. Later in 2018, an Ohio man was sentenced to 22 years in prison after he flew Texas to attack the prison where Siddiqui is being held in an attempt to free her, according to the prosecutors.