A BRIT terrorist shot dead during a US synagogue siege grew up a normal Lancashire lad before falling into the clutches of Islamic militants, his family said yesterday.

Faisal Akram loved Sunday roasts, Blackburn Rovers striker Alan Shearer and the comedian Bernard Manning.

The Only Fools and Horses fan was a keen amateur boxer and as a teenager regularly fought in the same shows as Ricky Hatton.

But he was swept up by an Islamic sect in his 20s — and put on a path that led to burning £60,000 in the street and, last Saturday, taking four worshippers hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.

He demanded the release of a female Al-Qaeda terrorist, but his hostages later escaped.

Akram told his brother Gulbar in a final phone call: “I’ve been praying to Allah for this for two years, I’m coming home in a body bag”.

The 44-year-old was gunned down by a SWAT team.

Gulbar, 43, told The Sun on Sunday: “He wasn’t an angel.

"But if these religious nuts hadn’t got a hold of him, this would never have happened.

“And he didn’t hate Jews. One of his closest friends is Jewish.

“The mosques, Imams, police and the authorities all need to do more to prevent this kind of thing happening.”

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Gulbar, Akram and their four brothers were brought up in an Asian community in Blackburn but “in the typical English way”.

Gulbar said they were encouraged to take up both kung fu and boxing.

Akram did well at PE, maths and physics at school.

But he was expelled for “fighting and hustling”.

His worried parents sent him to military school in the Pakistani city of Jhelum.

Akram returned two years later to study business and marketing. But he failed to finish the course.

Gulbar remembered: “He was very intelligent but he was in a rush to make money.

"He was a proper Del Boy. He didn’t care if something was stolen if he could make some money.”

He dated a girl related to the multimillionaire owner of 1980s fashion brand Joe Bloggs, but they both suffered serious injuries in a car crash in September 1998.

Party-loving Akram broke his back and was on painkillers for six months, which Gulbar said changed his personality further.

He was a proper Del Boy. He didn’t care if something was stolen if he could make some money.

In 2003 Akram joined the Tablighi Jamaat sect — renouncing his previous lifestyle by burning £60,000 in cash outside the family’s mosque. He called it “dirty money”.

Akram spent time in Pakistan before marrying in Blackburn in 2004. He had five sons and a daughter.

But the marriage suffered problems because he would disappear for months on end to carry out religious missionary work.

Gulbar said: “Different characters started turning up. One of them was locked up for terrorism so the family was worried.”

He was now on the radar of anti-terrorism cops.

In 2016 he rowed with his wife, shut his chain of pharmacies and walked off with £800,000.

Gulbar told how his brother moved around and would disappear and then re-appear in his life.

He added: “He would be alive now if he hadn’t joined the extremists.”

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