The pilot who was narrowly prevented from hijacking a passenger jet en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The FlyDubai pilot, an Omani national who has not yet been identified, stabbed his co-pilot and tried to seize control of the jet, which was filled with Israeli passengers.
“We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News, citing information Israel has learned during its investigation. The prime minister did not reveal any additional details.
A fellow pilot told Israel’s Channel 16 journalist Yosef Yisrael the attacker was “someone characterized by very strange behavior, especially around religious observances that were out of step with his surroundings.”
“For instance, he used to pray a lot, and would not shake hands with women,” said the pilot, who spoke to Yisrael on the condition of anonymity.
The pilot also accused Flydubai, a sister airline of Emirates, of “betraying” Israel because the airline hired the pilot who carried out Wednesday’s attack.
“There is no other way to put it, we hired the services of a terrorist and nearly caused the deaths of 180 people,” the pilot told Yisrael. “Usually only Emiratis fly to Israel. It is not clear how he got on this flight.”
Israel requires anyone who enters to maintain a passport from a country that has diplomatic relations with Israel; Oman does not.
“This is a clear breach of the agreement,” a source within Israel’s transportation ministry told the Jerusalem Post.
“Every pilot that is going to be flying into Israel, we are going to know the pilots’ identities, know who they are, and do some type of security check,” Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office, told Reuters.
Yaniv Hayun, one of the passengers who overpowered the hijacker, told Netanyahu he knew something was wrong after the plane plummeted more than 17,000 feet. Hayun, along with other passengers, were able to wrest control from the rogue pilot and two off-duty pilots who happened to be onboard took over, making an emergency landing in a small airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
“Someone screamed… the light went out,” Hayun said, in a video posted Netanyahu on social media.
Hayun and other passengers pushed their way into the cockpit, where they found the pilot had been stabbed. The attacker was “trying to destroy the instruments in order to…disable the plane.”
“I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and pulled him — first and foremost — outside,” Hayun said.
“We pulled him out; it was a matter of seconds. I called out to the Israeli guys with us on the plane — I called them, and two other guys came over to me… we pinned [the attacker] down to keep him secure,” Hayun continued.
Hayun then took it upon himself to grab the instruments in the cockpit, and attempt to level the plane. When Netanyahu asked if he knew what he was doing, at the time manning the plane that had just plummeted thousands of feet, Hayun said he watches the show Air Crash Investigation.
The United Arab Emirates said Thursday it is conducting an investigation into the incident to determine if it was linked to terrorism. Netanyahu told CNN the actions of the other pilot and passengers onboard “managed to prevent a 9/11 disaster.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz described the attack as “an attempted jihadist terror attack, which was thwarted only thanks to the heroism of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist, and with their own hands returned control of the aircraft to an additional flight crew that was present.”