Probe into accused hijack co-pilot’s links to Victorian university

Counter terror police are investigating the Victorian connections of the flydubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to hijack the aircraft en route to Israel, after reports the man had studied at Melbourne university RMIT.

The co-pilot, identified by media as 29-year-old Omani national Hammam al-Hammami, allegedly brandished an axe towards the lead pilot in a horrifying mid-air clash aboard flydubai’s Flight FZ1073.

The attack came close to killing all 174 passengers and crew, according to witness accounts, before passengers seized al-Hammami while two off-duty pilots stabilised the Boeing 737, landing at a regional airport in Saudi Arabia.

A Victorian joint counterterrorism team, which includes ASIO and Victoria Police, was investigating al-Hammami’s links to Australia, the Australian Federal Police confirmed.

An AFP spokeswoman said a further update would be provided at an appropriate time.

According to a now-deleted LinkedIn profile reported by American media outlets CNN, ABC News and The New York Times, al-Hammami had posted that he studied engineering at Melbourne’s RMIT University.

A source with knowledge of the inquiry, not authorised to speak on the record, said the suspect had been granted a visa to study in Australia in 2014, and had been in Melbourne from 2015 to 2017 before leaving. His visa expired in 2019. There was no inference that the visa should not have been granted, the source said.

RMIT was approached by this masthead and declined to comment, on the basis that the matter was being investigated by Victorian authorities.

When asked about the investigation on Sunday morning, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll said he had not been briefed on al-Hammami’s potential connections to the state.

“It’s concerning, and I will follow that up as a matter of priority,” he said. “I met with the prime minister last week, and will always continue to work with our law enforcement agencies to keep Victoria safe.”

Omani pilot Hammam al-Hammami is accused of attacking his colleague on a flydubai flight to Israel.LinkedIn/SuppliedProfessor Greg Barton, a terrorism and Islamic politics expert at Deakin University, said the investigation would sift through names and associates of al-Hammami while he was Australia.

He said the counterterrorism taskforce would also have access to al-Hammami’s archived social media material to probe his broader online footprint.

“If there were other individuals – close friends, people that he spent time with or would be influenced by [in Australia] – that come up on a Victoria Police watch list, then it’s possible his radicalisation began then, or maybe it didn’t,” Barton said.

“But one of the things that Victoria Police will be concerned about is that this appears to be a lone actor attack – not carried out in the name of al-Qaeda. But nevertheless, it could inspire somebody else to act, and we should at least check people who have connections with this guy and who might be especially motivated to imitate him.”

The lead prosecutor in the United Arab Emirates investigation, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, confirmed the co-pilot had attacked the lead pilot inside the ​cockpit with a crash axe that was fitted on board. A crash axe is typically kept in the cockpit for use during emergencies and does not pass through airport security.

“Investigations into the incident involving flydubai flight FZ1073 found that the co-pilot had attempted ⁠to carry out a terrorist attack,” the prosecutor general said in a statement carried by the UAE’s state news agency.

London’s Telegraph reported an X account with the handle @PilotHamam – which had given biographical details which match those of al-Hammami – had once advocated for violence against women and posted homophobic abuse.

In one reply, the account’s owner told a woman he would “stomp on her head” and wipe the floor with her to make her an example to others. In another exchange about a man striking a woman, the account said a pre-emptive slap would redefine her boundaries, “just as Russia slapped Ukraine to adjust its borders”.

Barton said what was unique about this apparent terror attack was that security checks had failed on the Israeli side when it came to vetting foreign flight crew arriving in the country, evidenced by how quickly after the attack that journalists were able to discover al-Hammami’s extremist social media posts.

“This stuff wasn’t hidden,” he said.

“The Israelis didn’t do their due diligence, and I suspect part of the problem is that there’s been so much political upheaval at senior levels there.

“There’s a terrible reality with these sort of incidents that there’s a copycat effect: other people will be looking at this and saying that it wasn’t that hard to do, and he almost succeeded ... What I hope Victoria Police is also doing is checking what exactly we do about flights coming into Melbourne.”

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