FlyDubai co-pilot bashed women in thousands of "manosphere" X posts

The FlyDubai co-pilot whose alleged violent attempt to crash a flight to Israel last week and kill everyone onboard has a history of writing and sharing misogynistic remarks on social media using the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere , CBS News has found.

Many posts written and shared by Hamam al Hamami on an X account that has since been deleted used derogatory language about women espoused by misogynistic online influencers . Some of his posts included violent rhetoric. In one, he threatened to "stamp on your head, wipe the floor with you, make you an example to others, and then release you." It is not clear if he was speaking about one person in particular, or referring to women in general.

Multiple sources familiar with the investigation into the alleged hijacking attempt told CBS News last week that al Hamami is an Omani national and was the co-pilot who attacked the plane's captain with a cockpit emergency ax as it approached Israel on Sept. 27. Passengers and crew managed to subdue him, according to their own accounts, and an off-duty flight crew on the jet made a safe emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

An Israeli security official told CBS News authorities were investigating the possibility the incident could have been an attempted Sept. 11-style terror attack. President Trump suggested a couple of days after the incident that the co-pilot could have links to Iran, "based on what I'm hearing."

His posts on X, which were made between November 2021 and late October 2022, paint a picture of a man who, at least during that period, had a very skewed view of women and a low opinion of men who, in his words, "grovel" to them.

"No matter how much you grovel or 'lick their feet,' you can forget about ever being with them; you chose the cheap, easy route to approach the opposite sex instead of elevating your own value as a man," he said in one post, which CBS News found an archived version of online. The posts were written in Arabic.

The Financial Times reported Wednesday that it discovered some 3,000 misogynistic messages posted or shared by al Hamami as part of an investigation, including him calling women "rotten meat."

According to the FT, he lauded flying as "the safest means of public transport."

CBS News has not independently reviewed all of the posts cited by the FT.

Al Hamami's posts mingled the rhetoric of extremist interpretations of Islam with that of the manosphere movement. The only woman he spoke of positively was his mother, whom he credited with raising him and his siblings "on religion, morals, and virtue."

In one archived post seen by CBS News, al Hamami uses the manosphere term "simp" to describe a man "who hangs around feminist circles, licking women's feet in hopes of gaining their approval and getting closer to them. Typically, only a low-value male resorts to this behavior, turning to foot-licking as the easiest way to ingratiate himself with women. Does this mean I have to lick women's feet? The only woman whose feet I would kiss is my mother.