MELBOURNE, Australia — The leader of a Melbourne Islamic centre named by prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates in their case against the co-pilot accused of trying to crash a flydubai jet has rejected any link to the suspect, saying he never met him, ABC News (Australia), The Guardian and Al Jazeera reported.
“I strongly reject any attempt to associate me or [the] Multicultural Youth Centre with Al-Hammami,” Samir Mohtadi, who is also known as Abu Hamza, said in a written statement. “Such claims are unfounded, misleading and risk unfairly damaging the reputation of an organisation that has served the wider Australian community for decades.” He added: “The relevant authorities should have verified these claims with me before releasing or publishing such information.”
“I have never met Al-Hammami … and we have no record of him ever attending our centre,” Mohtadi said, according to The Guardian. Neither he nor the centre, known as MyCentre, in the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, has been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. In a four-minute video posted Sunday, before the statement, he said that “the best thing sometimes is not to say anything.”
UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said last week that the 29-year-old suspect, widely reported to be Omani national Hamam Al-Hammami, began to “drift towards extremism and terrorism” in 2017 while studying at RMIT University in Melbourne, and became acquainted with people associated with the centre, ABC reported. Emirati prosecutors allege that on the Sept. 30 flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, he attacked the plane’s captain with an emergency axe, aiming to crash it into Ben Gurion Airport, before another pilot, a cabin crew member and passengers restrained him, Al Jazeera reported.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has said the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team, made up of the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and ASIO, is investigating the suspect’s links to Australia, and police and intelligence services in New Zealand, where he did some of his flight training, are also investigating, according to ABC and Al Jazeera.
Sources: ABC News (Australia), The Guardian, Al Jazeera
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