UAE Accuses Flydubai Attacker of Turning to Extremism While Studying in Australia; Australian Counter-Terrorism Agency Joins Investigation

The UAE Attorney General's Office said on Friday that the 29-year-old first officer accused of attacking Flydubai flight FZ1073 on September 30 had shown signs of "drifting toward extremism and terrorism" as early as 2017 while studying in Australia. The flight carried more than 170 passengers and crew. Australia's Victoria Joint Counter-Terrorism Team has launched an investigation into his connections with the country.

According to the BBC, the UAE's state news agency Wam, citing a statement from the Attorney General's Office, said that interrogations of the first officer "showed he was inspired by al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States."

The statement said: "The investigation showed that in 2017, during his studies in Australia, he first showed signs of drifting toward extremism and terrorism. During that period, he was influenced by takfiri extremist ideology, read extremist literature, and browsed online content glorifying terrorist organizations and suicide attacks."

The UAE also said the first officer told investigators that "he prepared himself psychologically and physically for carrying out the plot by increasing his exposure to materials promoting terrorism and undergoing boxing training under a personal trainer." The statement also said that "he admitted acting alone with no other involvement, but the investigation is ongoing to verify this claim."

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the man obtained an Australian student visa in 2014 and departed after studying in Australia from 2015 to 2017. The Sydney Morning Herald subsequently dug up deleted posts from the man's X account, in which he described his five years studying in Australia, the UK and New Zealand as "the golden years of my religious faith."

Within days of the attack, Australian authorities confirmed they were tracing the man's connections to Australia. The Victoria Joint Counter-Terrorism Team — jointly composed of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Victoria Police and the country's security intelligence agency ASIO — said this week that it "is investigating the man's connections with Australia."

The suspect's own self-characterization of his five years studying in the West as "the golden years of religious faith," overlaid with his identity as a person accused of plotting an attack on a civilian airliner, sits atop a record in which an Australian student visa admitted him into the country, only for him to ultimately be declared a terrorist attacker in the UAE. Australia's Federal Police did not launch a connection investigation until after the attack took place, and there is no public answer as to whether intelligence agencies across the three countries shared any actionable intelligence during the suspect's years of study. At precisely which point Australia's screening and monitoring system for foreign students failed is a question that the victim passengers and the public have the right to put to the government.

The UAE Attorney General's Office additionally accused the first officer of attempting to crash the plane into Tel Aviv Airport. This allegation currently rests solely on the UAE government and the state news agency Wam as sources and has yet to be corroborated by publicly available independent evidence. Since the UAE and Israel normalized relations in 2020, bilateral ties have repeatedly come under strain because of the Gaza war. Against this regional political backdrop, the UAE's unilateral account that the attack target pointed to Israel requires independent cross-verification rather than being accepted by default.

The suspect's claim that he planned the plot alone remains under investigation and has not been independently verified. The UAE official narrative on the suspect's motive, target and radicalization trajectory currently comes mainly from the version carried by the country's state news agency. Where the Victoria Joint Counter-Terrorism Team's investigation and the UAE's accusations ultimately lead will determine in what form of truth this incident is presented to the more than 170 passengers and crew.