Was the FlyDubai Terrorist Radicalized in Australia?

By Mihailo S. Zekic • October 13, 2026

The Omani national who tried to mass murder about 150 Israelis and about 30 other people on September 29 is accused of being radicalized at an Australian mosque.

First officer Hamam al-Hammami stabbed the captain with the cockpit’s crash ax and then tried to dive Flight 1073 into the Saudi Arabian desert before passengers stopped him. Hammami lived in Australia in the 2010s, and investigators are reportedly examining this period as the start of his radicalization process.

Hammami’s “drift toward extremism and terrorism” occurred while studying at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology between 2015 and 2017, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, the United Arab Emirates’ attorney general, said on Friday.

The U.A.E. says that while Hammami was in Melbourne, he developed connections to “My Center,” also known as the “Multicultural Youth Center,” which also functions as a mosque.
Hammami apparently knew the center’s leader, Samir Mohtadi, who has been a controversial figure for decades. Mohtadi has promoted material that encourages wife abuse and has been accused of referring to Jews as “bloodsucking humans” and of calling Allah to “cast terror into the hearts of the Zionists.”

After the Islamist Bondi Beach massacre of Jews in 2025, many Australians realized one of their “multicultural” factions possesses a strong, insidious and violent culture of anti-Semitism. This has been fueled by large-scale immigration from the Muslim world.

“Australia is a land historically detached from sectarian violence, from the Levant and from the plight of the Jewish people,” the Trumpet’s Australia correspondent, Callum Wood, wrote in the February issue. “Yet a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism has surged in recent years. Left unchecked, and in some ways endorsed, the hatred inexorably led to the Bondi massacre.”

This latest news indicates that Australia’s plague of anti-Semitism could cost more lives. Muslims living in Australia can inspire attacks on Jews not only in Australia but also far beyond.

Behold how local problems can become global issues. Australia’s anti-Semitism is serious and deserves rigorous examination, even months after the country is supposedly finding closure after the Bondi massacre. This trend is explained in detail in “Australia’s Undercurrent of Anti-Semitism.”