As time has progressed the world has learned more about the hijacking of a Flydubai aircraft bound for Israel. We’ve learned that this was not, as was the deliberate crashing of the Germanwings aircraft a few years back, an outbreak of mental illness from the co-pilot, Hammam al-Hammami, it was as we’ve found out an attempted act of jihad.
Jonathan Sacerdoti writing in the Spectator has put together what we know about this hijacking First Officer and it’s chilling.
Mr Sacerdoti said that what we have here is not someone who suddenly want apeshit either for mental health or religious reasons but someone who had planned an attack on Israel for years. Apparently the First Officer deliberately got himself placed on flights whose destination was Tel Aviv because he wanted to crash the plane into Ben Gurion airport killing thousands or more.
Mr Sacerdoti said:
“Hammam al-Hammami, attacked Captain Smit Machchar in the cockpit and attempted to seize control of the aircraft. What is now emerging from the investigation makes the episode considerably darker. According to reports of his confession under interrogation, Hammami had been preparing for this act long before he joined Flydubai.
Hammami is reported to have confessed that he had researched airlines flying to Tel Aviv and applied to several of them. He took the Flydubai job with Israel already in mind. During repeated flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv, he gathered information. He had considered carrying out the attack before and, according to interrogation accounts, abandoned or postponed previous opportunities because on one he had a friendship with a crew member he would have been murdering, and on another he had a crisis of confidence.
The failure of this attack should give us very little reason to relax
But now we know the target was also larger than the aircraft itself. Hammami reportedly told investigators that after killing the captain, he had intended to continue towards Israel as though making a normal landing approach, then divert at the last possible moment and crash into Ben Gurion airport. He also considered high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv. His calculation was straightforward and chilling: get close enough before revealing his intention that Israeli fighter aircraft would have no time to intervene.”
This attempt at jihad was not as many might have assumed it was something done off the cuff. This savage planned the attack in detail, did preparation work by studying Ben Gurion airport and when it was likely to be at its busiest, chose to work a route that flew to Tel Aviv and lulled the Captain into a false sense of security by stepping behind him to pray on previous occasions.
It is by luck and by Divine Providence that this savage’s plan did not come to fruition. Luck and Divine Providence meant that the Captain still had enough presence of mind despite suffering appalling wounds to unlock the cockpit door, that the passengers contained many military trained Israelis and that there were replacement pilots onboard.
This foiled hijacking could have been Israel’s 9/11 attack causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people. That such a plan failed is an absolute miracle.
Link
Mr Sacerdoti’s piece in the Spectator
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