Anger, misogyny and radicalisation: the online trail of the Flydubai attacker

The Flydubai co-pilot who tried to hijack a flight to Tel Aviv is a former cryptocurrency speculator who, four years ago, was living with his parents and calling women “rotten meat” on a now disabled social media account. Public information about Omani-Syrian aviator Hamam al-Hammami is scarce. Emirati investigators are keeping a tight hold on information gleaned from their interrogation of the would-be hijacker, diplomats say, and his online presence has been mysteriously scrubbed.However, his prodigious online output between November 2021 and October 2022 includes more than 3,000 posts on Twitter. Although his account has been deleted, the posts are still available on an internet archive.Often sending dozens of tweets in Arabic a day, the then 25-year-old Hammami bickered with other users, dispensed advice, opined about nutrition and fitness and enthused about flying – which he called the “safest means of transportation”. READ MOREHis frequently furious online presence fused highly conservative interpretations of Islam with the sexist language of the “manosphere”, a misogynist online movement that derides feminism and promotes sexist gender roles. There are also hints of conservative religious beliefs, with Hammami saying he did not listen to music.How and when Hammami was radicalised remains unknown.Emirati interrogators are also investigating whether or not Hammami acted alone when he used an emergency axe to attack his pilot and attempt to take control of the plane on September 30th. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said this was a terrorist act. Israeli investigators are convinced that Hammami was a lone wolf, people briefed on the matter said. [ ‘No one is passing through this door’: Inside the Flydubai cockpit fightOpens in new window ]But this insistence has failed to assuage anger in Israel over what critics are calling systemic security failures, with media reports that Hammami was flagged as having radical views by his previous employer, Oman Air, and relegated to a desk job. The co-pilot spent time in multiple countries in the Middle East. According to Hammami’s tweets, his Omani father wed his mother, a member of the Shamar tribe from southern Syria, in 1993. She “raised us on religion, morals, and virtue”, Hammami tweeted.He grew up partly in the UAE, according to media reports, but moved to Syria in 2011, the year the Arab Spring inflamed the region, a person familiar with the matter said. The teenager then lived for four years in the country as it was engulfed in civil war, a conflict which spawned and sustained a plethora of Islamist militant groups. Hammami's social media output indicates that he worked for Oman Air before moving to FlyDubai. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP Hammami undertook aviation studies in Australia from 2015 to 2017, where he said he had lodged with two local families, but did not graduate. From 2018 to 2019, he spent six months studying in New Zealand, at one of the world’s two major pilot training centres, with a flying school that was subsequently taken over by a British company, according to New Zealand officials.Hammami did an online course with a British university, although he never entered the UK, according to people with knowledge of the situation. One of Hammami’s tweets mentions that his brother studied in the UK.His five years in the West, he tweeted, were the “golden years of my religious commitment”, although he said his observance lapsed upon his return to the Middle East. The details mentioned in his Twitter account match with his biographical details and with his profile on LinkedIn, also now deleted.Investigators looking in to Hammami’s private online search history have found that he accessed extremist Islamist content while he was living in Australia, according to two people familiar with the investigation.Rather than completing his flying qualifications abroad, Hammami returned to Oman and got a job at the state-owned airline, a move that he tweeted was the “best decision I ever made”. Oman Air did not respond to a request for comment on his employment there.[ Flydubai flight: Indian pilot praised after disaster avertedOpens in new window ]Around 2019, Hammami got into spot trading and cryptocurrency speculation, a mistake he later blamed on being tempted by “the devil”. His attempted investments ended in failure, and he said he lost “120,000”. While he did not specify the currency, if it were Omani rials, that would be a loss of more than $300,000.Aged 25 by 2022, Hammami lived with his lawyer father and homemaker mother in a classy neighbourhood in the Omani capital Muscat. “I wouldn’t dare think about moving out of my family’s house as long as I’m not married,” he tweeted.Hammami joined Twitter – now rebranded as X – in late 2021, and was desperate to secure an arranged marriage. “I’m 25 and I want to get married today, before tomorrow!” he tweeted in January 2022.He stipulated that the lady should be an 18- to 23-year-old religious Saudi from a tribal background, wear a face-covering niqab, agree not to work outside the home and be willing to live abroad. He had no success using an online matchmaking platform for Muslims, he said, but had become convinced that most women “care primarily about money” and were “skilled at pretence”. His posts regularly evoked violence against women and used derogatory sexual slurs. “Her only obligation is to lift her legs,” he wrote. Discussing a woman seeking a divorce over a dispute about posting pictures online, he said: “She needs a good thrashing.” [ Passenger recounts taking control of Flydubai planeOpens in new window ]Hammami peppered his diatribes with the language of the manosphere, repeatedly using terms like “simp”, which refers to an affectionate man, or the approving moniker “Alpha” for a strong man, and interacting with accounts that promote sexist ideology. Despite his vitriol against women, Hammami boasted about the approaches he received. “I have never touched a girl in my life,” he wrote in January 2022, “even though I swear I have many opportunities ... God has protected us from temptations”, he added, saying he would not “chase after cheap, rotten flesh”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026