The FlyDubai co-pilot who is accused of attacking his pilot with an ax and attempting to take over their Israel-bound commercial flight last week planned to crash the aircraft into the passenger terminal at Ben-Gurion International Airport, the United Arab Emirates says.
The co-pilot, who has been identified as 29-year-old Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, took inspiration from the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, Emirati Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi said Friday, according to the state-run Emirates News Agency. He had used two previous flights to scout the route and the airport, Shamsi said.
Shamsi’s report, which alleges Hammami underwent a decade-long process of radicalization, raised questions about how he managed to elude FlyDubai’s screening measures. Investigators found that Hammadi “met the professional and security employment requirements” at the state-owned airline, Shamsi said, “without any indications appearing during those procedures that reveal his extremist tendencies or his intention to carry out a terrorist plot.”
Passengers on board FlyDubai Flight 1073 on Sept. 30 say Hammami struck the pilot with a crash ax, an emergency tool kept in the cockpit, and sent the Boeing 737 Max 8 into a nosedive. Pilot Smit Machchhar suffered life-threatening head injuries but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to subdue Hammami. Two pilots who were on board to fly the return trip then landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia.
Israeli authorities did not respond immediately to a request for comment Friday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Hammami had undergone “Islamic radical indoctrination” and was “suicidal.” A spokesman for Netanyahu described Hammami as “radicalized.”
“He talks on his social media about killing Jews,” spokesman Doron Spielman told The Washington Post. “So it’s very clear he had the intent and the motive to kill Jews before.”
Most of the roughly 180 people on board the flight from Dubai International Airport were Israelis, authorities have said.
Shamsi, the Emirati attorney general, said Hammami, “in the presence of his lawyer and with all the legal guarantees provided to him, gave a detailed confession of his motives and the stages of planning and execution,” the Emirates News Agency reported.
Hammami told investigators he acted alone, Shamsi said. They’re working to verify the claim. They have also taken statements from Machchhar, an Indian national, now recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, as well as the pilots of the return flight and crew members, Shamsi said.
Shamsi said Hammami “had begun to implement a pre-prepared terrorist plan aimed at controlling the plane and using it to carry out a suicide operation” on the Ben-Gurion passenger terminal “with the intention of causing the greatest possible number of human casualties,” the news agency reported.
Signs of Hammami’s “inclination towards extremism and terrorism” began appearing in 2017, Shamsi said, when he was studying at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, the news agency reported.
He read “extremist writings,” followed content that “glorifies terrorist organizations and suicide operations” and was influenced by Takfirism, which advocates killing Muslim apostates, Shamsi said.
Drawing on the 9/11 attacks, Shamsi said, Hammami pursued a career in aviation that took him from Oman Air to Royal Air Maroc and, in January, to FlyDubai.
Hammami was “dismissed” from Oman Air, Yossi Avraham Shelley, Israel’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, told The Washington Post last week, and subsequently departed Royal Air Maroc.
At Oman Air, a person familiar with the matter told The Post that Hammami was blocked from flying plans because he held radical views. He was assigned to a desk job and resigned, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. The person did not detail the views.
The employment requirements that Hammami met at FlyDubai included holding a pilot’s license and a certificate of good conduct, as well as achieving satisfactory examination results, Shamsi said.
Hammami prepared himself psychologically and physically for the attack, Shamsi said, by “intensifying his monitoring of materials that incite terrorism, and by training in boxing under the supervision of a private trainer.”
Machchhar is responding well to treatment, the Indian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Hammami remains in Emirati custody.
Liar Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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