(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the attacker who tried to take over a flydubai flight to Israel underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination,” based on personal information gathered by Israeli investigators.
The pilot, an Omani national, slipped through a loophole in a rule that states pilots flying to Israel can’t be from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, Netanyahu acknowledged to Fox News. The restriction had been applied to captains but not copilots, he said.
The copilot is suspected of stabbing the pilot of the jet carrying 174 passengers, most of them Israeli, shortly after the flight departed Dubai. The attacker was subdued by passengers and crew members and the plane safely landed at Tabuk Airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
The attacker remains in Saudi custody, while the United Arab Emirates has opened an investigation that includes examining “any and all possible connection to terrorist intent.” Netanyahu said Israel expects to participate in the investigation and told CNN that UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed had agreed that Israel would “join the interrogation.”
Asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity late Wednesday whether the incident was part of a broader terror plot, Netanyahu said it was too early to say.
Netanyahu said there was clear evidence that Iran and its proxies were targeting Israel and Israelis abroad but added, “whether or not this was carried out as part of that plan, that we don’t know yet.”
Meanwhile, the flydubai pilot who was attacked, Capt. Smit Machchhar, was stabbed by his copilot in the head, the prime minister told Fox News on Thursday. “And his arm was basically split in two. And there was a lot of blood,” he said.
Machchhar’s wounds were treated by a dentist on the flight, while other passengers subdued the attacker, the prime minister said.
Machchhar was stabilized at a hospital in Saudi Arabia near where the plane landed, Fox reported. The pilot was airlifted to a hospital in Doha, where he is being treated and believed to be safe.
Flydubai has suspended flights to and from Israel while the incident is investigated. Israel is also tightening security checks on pilots flying into the country, including those working for foreign airlines, according to Netanyahu spokesman Doron Spielman.
He noted that Israel was dispatching its planes to “bring the thousands and thousands of Israelis” back home.
Yaniv Hayun, one of the men who helped incapacitate the attacker on the flydubai aircraft bound for Israel from the United Arab Emirates, is welcomed after arriving at the Ben Gurion International Airport. (Jamal Awad/picture alliance via Getty Images)Netanyahu praised Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun, who helped subdue the attacker and then briefly took the aircraft’s controls. The prime minister said Hayun was a plumber who unclogged sewage systems. “I said, ‘Well, you unclogged a big one this time!’”
Hayun said he knew to pull back on the aircraft’s controls because he had watched the television series “Air Crash Investigation,” also known as “Mayday” and marketed in the United States as “Air Disasters.” He was able to partially stabilize the aircraft before a reserve crew traveling as passengers took control and landed it safely in Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu has also been in touch with U.S. President Donald Trump over the incident. Trump said during their conversation after the attack on Wednesday that the prime minister had told him the details of what happened.
“An Israeli plumber,” Trump said, referring to Hayun, “having never flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted the stick and leveled out the plane before it crashed.”
It’s “an incredible story,” Trump said.
