JERUSALEM: The axe-wielding co-pilot who attacked the captain of a FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv last month intended to seize control of the airplane and fly it into the passenger terminal at Israel’s main international airport, authorities in the United Arab Emirates said Friday.
The suspect, an Omani national, did so “with the intention of causing the greatest possible number of human casualties,” the UAE’s top prosecutor said in a statement carried by the state news agency WAM. Most of the 174 passengers on the flight were from Israel.
The statement said the co-pilot “drew inspiration” from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and used two previous flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv to “familiarize himself with the flight route and the airport.”
It said none of FlyDubai's security or professional checks had indicated that the pilot, who was identitifed by The Associated Press as 29-year-old Hamam al-Hammami, harbored extremist views or plans to carry out an attack.
Hammami “admitted that he had acted alone, without the involvement of others,” the statement said, adding that he “provided a detailed confession outlining his motives and the stages of planning and execution” in the presence of his lawyer. It also suggested he was radicalized at a mosque in Australia while attending the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2017.
The update from the public prosecutor Friday was the most comprehensive since the UAE took over the investigation shortly after the incident on Sept. 30. FlyDubai is a government-owned airline.
The crisis unfolded suddenly in the skies above Jordan and Saudi Arabia, when Hammami attacked the captain, Smit Machchhar, with a crash axe in the cockpit. Bloodied and beaten, Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, alerting passengers and crew to the assault.
Passengers detained Hammami and helped steady the aircraft, which had plunged roughly 14,000 to 16,000 feet in less than a minute. Two reserve pilots then guided the plane to an emergency landing at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia.