Melbourne Islamic leader stays silent on hijacker link allegations

On Sunday night, as prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates were laying out their case against a co-pilot accused of attempting to hijack a commercial aircraft, the leader of a Melbourne Islamic centre released a four-minute video to his community's Facebook page. Samir Mohtadi, who also uses the name Abu Hamza, spoke about the virtue of silence in the face of attack. He did not mention the allegations. He did not address the accusations. He simply quoted Islamic texts and spoke of righteous people throughout history who had been attacked, abused, and imprisoned, and who chose not to respond.

The timing was pointed. Hours earlier, Dr Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, the attorney general of the UAE, had made a public statement about the 29-year-old co-pilot, Hammam al-Hammami, who was accused of planning to hijack Flydubai Flight 981 on September 30 and crash it into Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. According to al-Shamsi's account, investigators had traced al-Hammami's ideological path and found that his "drift towards extremism and terrorism" had begun in 2017 while he was studying engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne. The attorney general alleged that al-Hammami had attended a mosque affiliated with the university and through those visits had become acquainted with people connected to MyCentre, the Islamic centre managed by Mohtadi.

It was important to note what the UAE attorney general did not allege. There was no claim that anyone at MyCentre had radicalised al-Hammami, or maintained contact with him, or had any knowledge of his intentions before the flight. The connection, as presented, was geographical and social—a place he had visited, people he had encountered. Yet the allegation was enough to draw international attention to the centre and its leader.

Al-Hammami's alleged path to the plot was documented in the prosecutor's statement. After leaving Australia before completing his engineering degree, he had undergone flight training in New Zealand and become a qualified commercial pilot. According to prosecutors, he had adopted ideas advocating violence and terrorism, drawing inspiration from the September 11 attacks of 2001. "The idea of carrying out a similar operation using an aircraft became firmly established in his thinking," the statement said. He had prepared himself by intensifying his exposure to material promoting terrorism and training in boxing under a private coach. On the morning of September 30, with 182 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft, he allegedly attempted to execute the plan. The passengers and crew intervened and stopped him.

In his video, Mohtadi spoke of Mariam, the mother of Jesus, who had been subject to criticism and attack but chose silence. "I'm not going to speak to anyone," Mohtadi quoted her as saying. "I'm going to fast from talking." He then addressed his community directly: "There are circumstances, my beloved brothers and respected sisters, regardless how much you explain yourself to people, that's it, they're fixated with their ideas and that's it, you can't change them. So the best thing, sometimes, is not to say anything."

RMIT University confirmed that al-Hammami had studied engineering there. Australian security agencies launched an investigation after it emerged he had spent about two years in the country. New Zealand authorities were also examining his time there between November 2018 and May 2019. On Sunday, Australia's home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said the co-pilot had been radicalised online and that the government intended to improve screening of people at the border and in digital spaces. Mohtadi had been contacted for comment but had not responded directly to the allegations.