Middle East & North Africa
UAE: flydubai co-pilot planned to crash the aircraft into Ben Gurion airport, “drawing inspiration from 9/11”
The UAE attorney general says the co-pilot who tried to seize a flydubai Boeing on September 30 planned a suicide attack on Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. He told investigators he acted alone, according to the statement carried by WAM.
The co-pilot who tried to take control of a flydubai aircraft on September 30 was planning a suicide attack: to crash the Dubai–Tel Aviv flight into a terminal at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. This was announced on Friday, October 9, by the UAE attorney general, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, in a statement carried by the state news agency WAM.
According to the prosecutors, the plan “drew inspiration from the 9/11 attack”. The investigation, which began on October 1, found that the 29-year-old suspect had used two earlier flights to Tel Aviv to “familiarise himself with the flight route and the airport”. He had previously worked for Oman Air and Royal Air Maroc before joining flydubai in January.
Confession and radicalisation
The attorney general said the suspect told investigators he had prepared himself psychologically and physically by watching material promoting terrorism and taking boxing lessons. According to the statement, the first signs of his drift towards extremism appeared in 2017, when he was studying in Australia. He “admitted that he had acted alone, without the involvement of others” and gave a detailed confession in the presence of his lawyer.
Investigators also examined the airline’s recruitment procedures. The suspect met all professional and security requirements, holding a pilot’s licence and a certificate of good conduct, but “none of the procedures revealed any indications of his extremist views”. The UAE authorities have not named him. Reuters and the Associated Press, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter, identify him as Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national, as Al Jazeera reports.
What happened on flight FZ1073
Flight FZ1073, with 174 people on board, left Dubai at 07:05 local time and climbed to 34,000 feet. A little over two hours later it began a steep descent, losing more than 17,000 feet in about two minutes, according to flight-tracking data. In the cockpit, the co-pilot had stabbed the Indian captain, Smit Machchhar. Passengers and crew members entered the cockpit and overpowered him, and the transponder switched to code 7500, which signals unlawful interference.
Two reserve pilots who were travelling on the aircraft took control and landed it safely at Tabuk, in north-western Saudi Arabia. Days later, Donald Trump held Iran responsible for the attempt. The UAE attorney general’s statement makes no mention of any state involvement and describes a perpetrator who acted alone.