Flydubai Co-Pilot’s Chilling Admission: Wanted to crash plane, not afraid to die

Dubai: The flydubai co-pilot who attacked Captain Smit Machchhar told investigators in Saudi Arabia that he wanted to crash the plane and was not afraid of death, according to a Saudi official briefed on his interrogation.

Hamam al-Hammami, the 29-year-old Omani national, is now being questioned by authorities in the UAE after being brought back from Saudi Arabia, where the flight made an emergency landing following the attack.

The UAE attorney general on Saturday said the co-pilot had attempted to carry out a terrorist act. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel are investigating the incident, including whether Hammami had any links to outside powers.

Hammami is accused of repeatedly slashing the captain with an onboard crash axe before attempting to take control of the aircraft. The captain eventually managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to intervene. The flight was carrying more than 170 people when the attack took place.

Hammami was born to an Omani father and a Syrian mother and had lived in Dubai for years. He also spent time in Syria during the country's long civil war.

Investigators are examining whether he began to radicalise while in Syria, where Islamist rebels fought the Assad regime, according to sources. More than 3,000 screenshots of posts from his deleted X account remain available through the Internet Archive. Several posts expressed opposition to women working and a preference for religious women who wear the veil.

In one post from December 2021, Hammami said he had created a fake account pretending to be Syrian or Lebanese to contact Saudi women. In another, he wrote that he had a rule that his wife would not work.

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