United Arab Emirates prosecutors announced on Friday that the co-pilot who attempted to take over a passenger jet traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week intended to carry out a suicide attack on Israel's primary international airport. The 29-year-old assailant, identified as Hammam al-Hammami, assaulted the flight's Indian captain with an emergency axe during the journey. Despite sustaining severe injuries, the pilot managed to unlock the cockpit security door, enabling passengers to intervene and subdue the attacker.
An off-duty relief pilot among the roughly 180 passengers ultimately took control of the aircraft and landed it safely in Saudi Arabia. Dr Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, the attorney-general of the UAE, stated that al-Hammami remains in Emirati custody and has confessed to executing a deliberate terrorist plot designed to strike the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv with the intention of maximizing casualties.
According to the attorney-general's statement, al-Hammami began radicalizing while studying in Australia, where he absorbed extremist literature and online materials that glorified terrorist groups and suicide operations. The Omani national entered aviation career paths after drawing inspiration from the September 11, 2001, attacks, which cemented his ambition to use an aircraft for a similar strike.
Following these revelations, Australian authorities initiated a probe into al-Hammami's time in the country, where he lived as a student for roughly two years until departing in 2017 without finishing his engineering studies. New Zealand police also confirmed that he completed flight training in their country about a year after leaving Australia.
Questions have been raised regarding how al-Hammami cleared background checks to join crews operating flights to Israel. His professional background includes earning a distance-learning aviation management degree from Buckinghamshire New University in 2023, flying for Oman Air between 2020 and 2024, working briefly for Royal Air Maroc in early 2025, and joining government-owned low-cost carrier flydubai in January 2026.
Security agencies have sought to determine whether al-Hammami operated independently or maintained ties to militant networks like al-Qaida or the Islamic State. Emirati officials indicated that current evidence points to a lone-wolf operation, with al-Shamsi noting that the suspect confessed in the presence of his attorney to acting entirely alone, though inquiries remain ongoing to confirm this assertion.
State news agency reports revealed that investigators discovered al-Hammami utilized two prior flights to Tel Aviv to study the flight path and acquaint himself with the destination airport. The majority of the passengers on the targeted flight were Israeli, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently praised both the passengers and the pilot for their courage in stopping the thwarted assault.