Flydubai attack investigation widens as alleged hijacker’s training in New Zealand scrutinised

New Zealand authorities have launched their own investigation into the flydubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to hijack an Israel-bound plane, after police confirmed he underwent flight training there about a year after he abandoned a degree in Australia.

Disaster was narrowly averted on 30 September when passengers and crew intervened to stop the alleged attempt of the co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, 29, to take control of a flight to Tel Aviv with 182 people onboard.

Hammami, an Omani national, had allegedly used a crash axe in the attempted “terrorist attack”, in which the pilot was stabbed mid-air, the United ⁠Arab Emirates’ prosecutor general said. Israeli and other officials in the region suspect he originally planned for such an attack in July, but postponed it.

The New Zealand police assistant commissioner, Michael Johnson, on Tuesday confirmed the man was in the country on a student visa for 175 days, from 30 November 2018 to 23 May 2019.

“Police can confirm the co-pilot was in New Zealand to complete a portion of his flight training for a UK-based company, no longer operating in New Zealand,” Johnson said in a statement

The police are now investigating his time in the country, Johnson said.

New Zealand joins multiple countries scrambling to piece together the background of Hammami and his intentions, as well as to establish if he acted alone.

Over the weekend, Australian security agencies launched an investigation after it emerged Hammami spent about two years in the country as a student until 2017. He left the country without completing his engineering degree, RMIT University in Melbourne confirmed.

On a now deleted social media profile believed to belong to Hammami, the then student appears in a selfie with other teenagers in a shopping centre food court in Melbourne’s CBD.

The UK’s Telegraph reported on a post on a now deleted X account that appears to be linked to Hammami that described his years studying overseas as “the golden years of my religious commitment”, and claimed he became less observant when he returned to Oman.

On Wednesday, Australia’s peak Jewish body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, called for a thorough investigation of Hammami’s associations in the country.

“We have seen over the years the availability of extremist literature in religious bookstores, the presence of preachers of hate and violence and the capacity for those living in Australia to fall under the sway of recruiters and nefarious street preachers,” the council’s co-chief executive, Alex Ryvchin, said in a statement.

“We have to understand who associated with this [alleged] terrorist, who influenced him and what vestiges of his murderous ideology remain.”

The flight’s captain, Smit Machchhar, who also trained in New Zealand for a time, said on Saturday that shortly after Hammami had left his seat to pray, he felt a “big blow” to the back of his head.

In a phone call on Saturday with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Machchhar said: “The blows kept coming … That’s when I realised that it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

Despite his injuries Machchhar was able to unlock the cockpit’s security door to allow passengers to overpower Hammami. A reserve flydubai pilot travelling on the flight took control of the aircraft and landed it at a regional airport in north-western Saudi Arabia, where the co-pilot was detained by Saudi authorities.