Netanyahu says Omani copilot who tried to bring down flight ‘underwent Islamist radical indoctrination’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday asserted that the Omani first officer who stabbed the pilot on the flydubai flight “underwent Islamist radical indoctrination.” While Netanyahu did not elaborate, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that the copilot discussed killing Jews on social media.

Netanyahu also said in a separate video that the attacker asked the Emirati crew members to kill him after he had been subdued, citing conversations with passengers on the flight.

He was basing this comment on accounts of the attack given to him by some of the Israeli passengers who subdued the assailant and saved the plane. Yaniv Hayun, one of the Israelis who overpowered the Omani copilot, told Netanyahu that the attacker called out, “Kill me,” when he had been bound and immobilized and he knew his attempt had failed.

In a video released by the Government Press Office, Dr. Shota Musayev, who treated the plane’s stabbed captain, described to Netanyahu how the Israelis initially used headphone wire to tie up the copilot, “to ensure that he could not start to go wild.”

Hayun interjected, “He shouted, ‘Kill me, kill me,’ in English.” Hayun elaborated, “That means he had failed in the mission and preferred to die.”

“This was a person who was willing to commit suicide,” said the official. “His social media accounts [say] clearly that he has been radicalized into jihadist ideology. He talks about killing Jews.”

“We can’t say for sure until the investigation’s over,” the official continued, “but it certainly seems like he was a suicide actor who was probably going to try to down that plane.”

Netanyahu echoed that assessment during an interview with Fox News, saying, “The attacker, he calls out to the aircrew, ‘Kill me, kill me,'” making it “clear he was suicidal.”

“I think it’s too early to say whether there was Iranian collusion,” the prime minister added, but said he anticipated more definitive findings soon.

It was the second time the prime minister spoke to the conservative US cable news outlet in the past 24 hours. Netanyahu said Israel will be able to conclusively state within the coming days whether the copilot had any links to Iran, after also acknowledging during the earlier Fox interview “it’s too early to say.”

Nevertheless, Netanyahu warned, “it might be attempted again because we have indications that Iran and its proxies are trying to conduct attacks against Israel and Israelis right now in this election season.”

US President Donald Trump was similarly asked Thursday if the pilot was linked to Iran, to which he responded, “We’re working on it. They’re being very open with us. I would say the answer based on what I’m hearing is yes.”

But when pushed by a reporter outside the White House on whether the pilot was either planted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or radicalized some other way, Trump was less definitive.

“Could have been, yeah,” he responded.

It was unclear whether Trump received intelligence or been briefed on the ongoing probe.

Custody

According to Netanyahu, the copilot was held by Saudi Arabia, which will “I assume, very quickly” transfer him to the UAE for interrogation. “He’s an Omani national… We’ll join the interrogation and find out what happened there exactly.”

Saudi Arabia later confirmed that both the captain and copilot, who were treated in the hospital for injuries, left for Abu Dhabi on Thursday morning after receiving medical clearance. Saudi Arabia said it conducted a preliminary investigation with security teams from the UAE.

In the meantime, Israel was doing its own internal investigation and making changes to security procedures, the anonymous Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

“There was a loophole here, and we’re taking care of that,” Netanyahu told Fox in reference to the copilot being allowed to fly to Israel despite hailing from a country that has no diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a key member of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, meanwhile demanded Israel “use all means available” to extradite the attacker and prosecute him in Israel.

“Someone who planned to crash a plane and murder 180 Israelis should be extradited to Israel and pay the heaviest price here,” he said. “Anyone who tries to murder or harm Israelis will be pursued by the State of Israel and held to account anywhere in the world.”

Neither Saudi Arabia, where the plane was diverted and the alleged assailant was being held, nor Oman, the pilot’s home country, has diplomatic relations with Israel, likely complicating any effort to extradite him directly.

While Israel does have diplomatic relations with the UAE, the two countries do not have a bilateral extradition treaty. The Emirati chief prosecutor announced Thursday that it was investigating the copilot for “terrorist activity or intent.”

‘Couldn’t trust anyone’

When Netanyahu met with the flydubai passengers who intervened and prevented the copilot’s apparent attempt to crash the plane, they told him that they did not know initially if any crew members were also in on the attack.

In the video released by Netanyahu’s office, they said they insisted that the attacker speak with crew members in English so that they would know what he was saying. “That’s very interesting,” responded Netanyahu.

“We tried to simply maintain control over the situation, because we couldn’t trust anyone,” one of the passengers said.

During the meeting, Netanyahu told the Israelis they would light a torch in Israel’s official Independence Day ceremony next year.

“The whole world sees [your] Israeli heroism… You will light a torch honoring civilian heroism on Independence Day,” Netanyahu told Hayun, Or Pardilov, Musayev and his wife, Sigalit, while hosting them at his office in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu listened to “their harrowing account” of helping to thwart the attack after the copilot attempted to crash the plane, telling them that “through extraordinary bravery, resourcefulness and faith, they had prevented a major disaster and saved many lives.”

The prime minister does not have the authority to unilaterally determine who will light a torch at next year’s traditional ceremony. Under the government-established selection process, torch lighters are chosen through a public advisory committee and subsequently approved through the designated ministerial process.

Pilot suggests passenger could have landed in ‘gentle crash’

Also on Thursday, India’s embassy in the UAE said that the captain stabbed by the copilot was moved from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates and was recovering.

The captain, Smit Machchhar, has been celebrated for the crucial role he played in saving all those aboard the flight by managing to click open the release on the cockpit door after being stabbed, allowing the passengers and crew to overpower the copilot and enable a second pair of flydubai pilots who were on board to land the jet in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Before those pilots took control of the aircraft, Hayun helped stabilize the plane, which he said he learned from watching the television show “Air Disasters.”

“Captain Machchhar is in good health and recovering well. The embassy remains in close coordination with local authorities to ensure his continued medical care and well-being,” the Indian embassy wrote on X.

The two relief pilots — one of whom is British — were on the plane in order to fly it back to Dubai from Tel Aviv, Channel 12 news reported.

The original flight would have gone over the permitted flying time for pilots, the television report said, so the second crew was sent along.

If they had not been on board, however, a commercial pilot told The Times of Israel that it was theoretically possible for a passenger to have landed the plane in “a gentle crash,” saying that “most people could walk away.”

But the passenger would have to know how to get on the radio with a flight tower first.

“You have to be a very smart person who can take a lot of instruction over the radio,” the pilot explained. “They would probably send them to a very, very long runway.”

“If he had the radio in his ear, you could listen to the radio and someone could talk you through,” he continued, cautioning that “It’d be a very big miracle.”

Of course, someone with experience flying small planes would have a huge advantage.

“A guy who flew a Cessna would be able to line up a plane,” said the pilot. He added, however, “Now, it wouldn’t be a pretty landing.”