Reports say Flydubai suspect was 'lone wolf' extremist

Celia Hatin (0:00)

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatin, and at 13h GMT on Monday, the 5th of October, these are our main stories. Reports suggest the pilot accused of trying to hijack a Flydubai plane bound for Israel was a lone wolf extremist. Anger in Japan after a US Marine is arrested suspected of murder.

Also in this podcast, a BBC investigation asks, why are more younger people getting cancer?

Sarah Berry (0:34)

Those that were born in the 1990s have about three times the risk of developing early onset bowel cancer compared to those were born in the 1950s.

Celia Hatin (0:44)

We'll take you to the forests of Madagascar, why lemurs are similar to human opera singers.

Let's begin with more developments surrounding last week's Flydubai passenger plane that never made it to its intended destination, Tel Aviv. Instead, we're learning more about the co-pilot on that flight who's accused of trying to hijack the plane after attacking the flight captain and then sending the plane into a nosedive. The captain fought back and alerted others on board who subdued the co-pilot and safely took over the plane's controls. The flight made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia and the plane's mostly Israeli passengers have now arrived back home. A terrifying experience for all on board that could have ended in tragedy. So what happened? The alleged attacker is now back in the UAE where he's being interrogated by investigators and that's why we're learning more about what he might have been planning.

Let's get the latest on the investigation from John Donison, our correspondent in Jerusalem.

John Donison (1:52)

The interrogation being carried out by UAE intelligence officers, but I'm pretty sure the Israelis are having a big involvement in that as well. The briefings and the leaks were getting out of this interrogation is that they seem to be working on the assumption that he was operating as a lone wolf, as they're sometimes called, so he wasn't following orders from a specific organization or a state actor. And in a way that is less damaging to the Israeli government in terms of the security failure that allowed this to happen, because I think a lone wolf is much harder to deal with than someone who's being sponsored or put up to it by someone else or a state actor. What they're saying is that the intention was to take over the plane and crash it into either Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv or a high-rise building in Tel Aviv. And it's this that has led the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say that what was prevented by the other pilot and by the passengers who stormed the cockpit was another 9-11 style attack.

Celia Hatin (3:00)

And John, there are reports too that the co-pilot had a history of posting on social media about his extremist views.

John Donison (3:07)

There are clear failures here. He had been banned from flying in his home country, Amman, because of his extremist views, and they had been monitoring his social media posts. Some of them are reported to have sort of praise for senior al-Qaeda figures. And the question is, how could someone who'd been banned from flying in Amman end up getting a job with Flydubai and then end up flying planes to Israel?

Normally, Israel would not allow a plane to be flown by a pilot from a country with whom Israel does not have diplomatic relations. And that is the case with Amman. And it's being reported that this was not the first time he had been making a flight to Israel. He'd actually visited earlier in the year. So clearly, a real failure of security.

Celia Hatin (3:59)

A security failure, as you say. So who's asking tough questions right now inside Israel about that apparent failure? We have to note that we're very close to an Israeli election.

John Donison (4:10)

We've got an election, a crucial election, one that is very tightly fought, coming up in less than a month's time. Now last week, when this first happened, I think the sort of general view was that this could be good for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is narrowly trailing in the polls, because he is someone who thrives when he's portraying Israel as a country under attack and that he's the only person who can provide security. But now, given that it looks like there was a real failure within the Ministry of Transport here in Israel, why wasn't this pilot vetted? How come he was allowed to fly this flight? And there has been a absolute disaster, narrowly averted, really it's miraculous that it was averted, given when you think of what actually happened. So the opposition who are running against Mr. Netanyahu in this forthcoming election, well, they're saying, look, this is another huge intelligence and security failure. And you have to remember that they're already calling out Mr. Netanyahu for his failure to take responsibility for what happened on October the 7th, the greatest intelligence and security failure possibly in Israel's history. And we've got the anniversary of that October the 7th attack coming up just this week. So yes, the issue of intelligence, security failures is playing pretty big in the run up to this election.