All hostages were safely released from a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue after a twelve-hour standoff and the hostage-taker was killed, US officials announced on Sunday.
“The four hostages are unharmed, and the hostage-taking is not part of an ongoing threat,” the Dallas office of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation said. The hostages included a rabbi.
"Prayers answered. All hostages are out alive and safe," Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted about 20 minutes after a large bang and gunfire were heard in the direction of the synagogue.The FBI said their “negotiators were in near-constant communication with the hostage-taker before a deliberate decision to breach the synagogue.”
Soon after these announcements, media outlets in the nearby cities of Fort Worth and Dallas reported that the hostage-taker, who earlier identified himself as Muhammad Siddiqui, was dead.
The man who raided the synagogue during the Sabbath services also claimed that he was Aafia Siddiqui’s brother and demanded her release.
Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by a New York court in 2010 for the attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan.
Dr Aafia has nothing to with the incident: attorney
However, the attorney who represents Dr Siddiqui said "she has absolutely no involvement with" the hostage-taking and the perpetrator was not Siddiqui's brother.
“She does not want any violence perpetrated against any human being, especially in her name," Marwa Elbially told CNN by phone. "It obviously has nothing to do with Dr Siddiqui or her family."
"Whoever the assailant is, we want him to know that his actions are condemned by Dr Siddiqui and her family," Elbially said. "We implore you to immediately release the hostages and turn yourself in."
The resolution came more than 12 hours after the suspect entered the Congregation Beth Israel as the synagogue was live-streaming its Sabbath morning service on Facebook.
The live stream appeared to capture part of the incident before it was removed. Law enforcement officials told CNN they reviewed the stream and used it to gather clues on the incident and the individuals involved.
Two law enforcement officials told CNN that investigators believe the perpetrator may have been motivated by a desire to release Dr Siddiqui.
At the suspect’s request, the rabbi of the congregation called a well-known rabbi in New York City. The alleged invader, who had no connection with the rabbi, told the priest that Dr Siddiqi was framed, and he wants her released, the officials said.
In a separate state, a US-based Muslim advocacy group known as CAIR, and Free Dr Aafia Movement condemned the hostage-taking and said that her brother had nothing to do with the incident.
John Floyd, who heads the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a legal counsel for Dr Siddiqui’s brother said: “This antisemitic attack against a house of worship is unacceptable. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community.”
They also said that they wanted to “make it very well known that the hostage-taker is NOT Dr Aafia Siddiqui's brother, who is not even in the same region where this horrible incident took place. Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her family strongly condemn this act and do not stand by the perpetrator.
They said that Dr Siddiqui's family has always stood firm in advocating for the release of their sister from incarceration by legal and non-violent means only.
Before the media reported the suspect’s death, CAIR and the Dr Siddiqui family’s legal counsel urged him to “immediately release the hostages and turn yourself in.”
Biden condemns 'rise of extremism'
President Joe Biden pledged to “stand against anti-Semitism and against the rise of extremism in this country.” “I am grateful to the tireless work of law enforcement at all levels who acted cooperatively and fearlessly to rescue the hostages,” he said.
“We are sending love and strength to the members of Congregation Beth Israel, Colleyville, and the Jewish community.”
Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, said he was “grateful” all the hostages had been released safely.
“No one should ever be afraid to assemble in their place of worship,” the Jewish Community Relations Council said in a statement.
AFIA SIDDIQUI- Siddiqui, who was a biology major at MIT, said in 1993 that she wanted to do 'something to help our Muslim brothers and sisters' even if it meant breaking the law.
She jumped to her feet and 'raised her skinny little wrists in the air' in a display of defiance that shocked her friends.
An in-depth account of her journey to infamy also reveals that she took a National Rifle Association shooting class and persuaded other Muslims to learn how to fire a gun.
Siddiqui lied to her husband and after they wed over the phone he was stunned to discover she was just marrying him for his family's connections to better enable her to wage jihad.Siddiqui, a mother-of-three, eventually got her twisted wish and became the most wanted woman in the world by the FBI.
She was handed to the Americans and convicted of attempted murder in a U.S. court in 2010.
But her hatred for the U.S. was so strong that during her interrogation she grabbed a rifle from one of her guards and shot at them shouting: 'Death to Americans'.
A 2014 Boston Globe profile of Siddiqui's time in Boston sought to answer what happened during her 11 years as a student in the U.S.
Something happened to radicalize an intelligent and devout woman who not only graduated from MIT but also got a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University.
At MIT she made few friends and was remembered as intelligent, driven and a regular at the Prospect Street mosque, which would later be attended by alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
She wore long sleeves and the hijab and was seen as 'very sweet' for a former roommate at her all-female dorm.
The focus of her life was the Muslim Student Association but things appear to have changed with the start of the Bosnian War, which seems to have been the beginning of her radicalization.
Siddiqui became involved with the Al-Kifah Refugee Centre, a Brooklyn-based organization which is thought to have been Al Qaeda's focus of operations in the US.
Terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann said: 'Aafia was from a prominent family with connections and a sympathy for jihad. She was just what they needed.'
In 1993 as she and some friends debated how to raise money for Muslims being killed during the Bosnian War, one of them joked that they didn't want to go on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Waqas Jilani, then a graduate student at Clark University, said: 'She raised her skinny little wrists in the air and said: 'I'd be proud to be on the Most Wanted list because it would mean I'm doing something to help our Muslim brothers and sisters'
'She said we should all be proud to be on that list'.
Jilani added that Siddiqui said in her speeches that Muslims should 'get training and go overseas and fight'.
He said: 'We were all laughing like, 'Uh-oh, Aafia's got a gun!'
'Part of it was because she was such a bad shot, but also because she was always mouthing off about the U.S. and the FBI being so bad and all.'
Siddiqui married Mohammed Amjad Khan, the son of a wealthy Pakistani family, in a ceremony carried out over the phone before he flew to Boston.
But upon arrival he discovered that far from being the quiet religious woman he had been promised, her life was very different.
He said: 'I discovered that the well-being of our nascent family unit was not her prime goal in life. Instead, it was to gain prominence in Muslim circles.'
Khan described to the Boston Globe how she regularly watched videos of Osama bin Laden, spent weekends at terror training camps in New Hampshire with activists from Al-Kifah and begged him to quit his medical job so he could join her.
In the end he stopped bringing work colleagues home because she would 'only to talk about them converting to Islam'.
Khan said: 'Invariably this would lead to unpleasantness, so I decided to keep my work separate....
'...By now, all her focus had shifted to jihad against America, instead of preaching to Americans so that they all become Muslims and America becomes a Muslim land'.
The breaking point was the September 11 2001 attacks after which Siddiqui, who was by now dressing in all black, insisted they return to Pakistan and got a divorce.
American officials suspect she remarried Ammar Al-Baluchi, the nephew of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, though her family deny this.
Siddiqui and her children disappeared in Karachi, Pakistan in 2003 shortly after Mohammed was arrested.
The following year she was named by FBI director Robert Mueller as one of the seven most wanted Al Qaeda operatives, and the only woman.