Posts by Hamam al-Hamami, the 29-year-old co-pilot who tried to seize control of a Fly Dubai flight, reveal extremist statements and incitement against Israel and Jews. The posts were written while he was studying aviation management remotely at Buckinghamshire New University in Britain, months and years before the attempted takeover.
2+According to recent reports, analysis of more than 2,000 posts published on an X account attributed to al-Hamami between November 2021 and August 2022 revealed a series of extremist statements. Among other things, the posts included support for punishment under Sharia law and statements justifying violence, alongside anti-Jewish messages.
In one exchange with a woman, al-Hamami allegedly wrote: “I will step on your head, mop the floor with you, make you an example to others, and then divorce you.” In another response to a discussion about men attacking women, he wrote that it was a “preventive slap” meant to set boundaries, comparing it to Russia’s actions against Ukraine.
2+According to the reports, in additional exchanges al-Hamami spoke harshly about women who were near men, even writing that in such a case one should “step on her head.” Alongside these statements, accounts attributed to him also included anti-Jewish statements. An Israeli source told The Times of Israel that the accounts “clearly show he was radicalized to jihadist ideology” and that he “talks about killing Jews.”
Al-Hamami, an Omani citizen, attacked the flight captain, Smith Machar, in the cockpit with an emergency axe and tried to seize control of the plane. The incident nearly ended in a crash of the aircraft, which had 182 passengers on board, until passengers and pilots who happened to be on the plane managed to overpower him and subdue the co-pilot.
2+A new reconstruction published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera raises the possibility that during the incident, the plane’s electrical systems were cut off. Two Boeing 737 captains who analyzed the documentation identified that emergency lights in the passenger cabin turned on while the plane was still in the air. According to them, this may indicate the generators were disconnected and the plane switched to battery power, as well as the possibility that both of the plane’s engines were shut off.
According to the reconstruction, the plane plunged in just over 30 seconds by about 16,000 feet, at a speed of more than 970 km/h. However, the possibility that the engines were actually shut off remains at this stage only a technical investigative direction and has not been established as an official conclusion. Investigators continue to examine the circumstances of the dive and the sequence of events in the cockpit.
Meanwhile, according to a CBS report, Israeli investigators involved in the investigation assess at this stage that al-Hamami acted alone, in a “lone attacker” scenario. Investigators are checking whether a terror organization or state actor was behind him, but so far no evidence of such a connection has been published. The investigation continues and focuses, among other things, on his motives, the radicalization process he underwent, and the circumstances that led to the attempted takeover of the plane.