Passengers helped stop knife attack in cockpit of Israel-bound plane

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0:30Reserve your spot with just$200 down at bkfsea.com. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret. Of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:13Hello, I'm Celia Hatton. Welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service, coming to you live from our studio in central London. Today, we're unravelling what happened on board passenger flight FZ1073. It took off from Dubai Airport just after 3 a.m. local time, carrying around 150 people. Most were Israelis. The flight was headed to Tel Aviv. But approximately two and a half hours into the flight, something went very wrong. An emergency code was signaled, and that code was briefly switched to a hijacking alert. Videos, widely circulating on social media, are helping us piece together what happened on board that flight before its unscheduled landing in Saudi Arabia.

1:58This is said to be the moment the plane took a rapid plunge.

2:10You can hear a distressed woman saying in Hebrew, what is going on? Another graphic video appears to show one of the plane's pilots who was stabbed, apparently being held down by several people around him. Some of them look like passengers. There are reports that the two pilots on the plane were fighting and the crew appealed for help from the passengers to intervene. We need video. We need video. It's good for you. It's good for you. Go ahead and for you. No sleep. It's good for you. You won't sleep? You saved the plane. It's good for you. It's good for you.

2:56So you heard some words there in English and in Hebrew. We can now hear people saying, we're in the cockpit guarding over. We were attacked. We're guarding the pilot. A second person then says, they attacked us on the plane. They tried to kill the pilot. We took control of then something that's indecipherable. Then someone says, tried to murder him. Then we hear, bro, well done, film everything. We're standing here. Nobody gets past the cockpit door. And that's the end of that video. One of the passengers on the flight, Almog Itali, explained what had been happening. I spoke with several people who were in the cockpit, and there are quite a few versions.

3:41It's unclear how the cockpit door was opened, whether someone from the crew opened it so help could come, or if it was forced open. It is unclear. What is clear is that there were two pilots in the front. One stabbed the other. And there were two spare pilots who were supposed to operate the next flight. The relief pilots are European, one of them British, who entered and pulled the aircraft up, pulled the yoke, stabilised the plane and landed us in Saudi Arabia. Hebrew media outlets have published video showing passengers clapping and singing as the fly Dubai plane lands at Tabuk Airport in Saudi Arabia close to 7 a.m.

4:23local time. Let's take a listen.

4:31Well, sounds of relief for all on board. Let's speak live now with our correspondent, John Donison, who's live for us en route to Tel Aviv's airport. John, it's a very fast-changing story, and a lot of speculation is circulating around what happened on that flight. But what's the very latest that you're hearing? Well, as we're getting more detail from the 170 or so passengers who were on board, we are getting really what appears to be an extraordinary and a terrifying picture, because initially you said in your introduction there was an alert saying that the plane had been hijacked. But what now seems a very real possibility is that it was not the passengers who were trying to hijack the plane, but one of the pilots.

5:16So there has been a fight between the pilot and the co-pilot inside the cockpit. All the while, the plane is plummeting very fast. We think around 17 ,000 feet, which is more than 5 ,000 meters in just a couple of minutes. And what some of the passengers have said is that the crew called for assistance. Passengers were then able to get into the cockpit where they found one of the pilots was suffering from stab wounds. And they were able to tackle one of the pilots and tie them up and secure them. And then, as we heard there, it does seem there were two pilots on the plane who were due to fly a later flight.

6:00And it was they who were able to get the plane leveled and fly it safely back to Saudi Arabia. And all the passengers are safe and well. Remarkable, John. What are we hearing from the Israeli government and also the initial Israeli response? I understand that fighter jets were scrambled. Yeah. So when we first get reports of this first thing this morning, the Israelis said that they'd scrambled fighter jets. and so had the Saudis to escort this plane back to Saudi Arabia. We think there were around about 100 Israelis on board, including more than 20 children. Now, we got a statement quite early this morning from the Prime Minister's office, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the situation was under control and efforts were now being made to get the Israelis back to Israel from Saudi Arabia.

6:50We've just had a statement within the last hour or so from the far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, And he has said that this was a terrorist attack. And he said that the plan was to deliberately crash the plane and kill all the passengers on board. Now, he presented no evidence to support that. But certainly investigators are going to be looking into the backgrounds of the pilots and what possible motives they might have had if that was indeed what one of them was intending to do. John, and as we should say, yes, we're still verifying reports and trying to pick apart ourselves what actually happened on that flight.

7:30But any more indications as to why the plane continued flying for so long? It didn't land until close to 7am local time. And also why it landed in Saudi Arabia? well i think look they were flying from dubai uh so uh where they'd reached in their journey it was perhaps quicker to get back to saudi arabia uh than to continue on to tel aviv and once i guess the situation had been secured on the plane it's possible that they just thought well, we need to get back to on the ground as quickly as possible. And Saudi Arabia was the place to do that. Okay. Thanks for speaking to us, John, on a very busy day, reporting day for you.

8:19Thank you. That was John Donison speaking to us from Jerusalem. Well, let's stay with this story and get more analysis on what might have happened and what's next. Emma Henderson, MBE, is a former airline captain and aviation expert. She joins me now from Scotland. Emma, you've been hearing since the listening, since the top of the programme, you've just heard what we reported and also what John had to say. What are your thoughts at this point from the information that we have? What do you believe happened? Well, it's certainly a very shocking story and one that as a pilot, you never hope to have to witness yourself, of course.

8:58And yes, I have been following it since this morning when, you know, And obviously the story has changed significantly since it was first reported. And we're getting more and more reports from eyewitnesses who are on board now as well. I think the important thing is, as you said earlier on, there's a lot of speculation. A lot of people are wading in to say what they think happened. And we have to stick to the facts. So we know that the aircraft landed safely in Tabuk. It diverted instead of carrying on to Tel Aviv. We know that there were two pilots in the flight deck who have been injured and there is a suspicion that one pilot has attacked another.

9:38And there are more and more reports of that coming from eyewitnesses on the plane. We also know that there were two other pilots on board the aircraft, which is extremely fortunate because they were able to take over and land the plane into book. And I don't even want to think about what would have happened if that hadn't been the case. so it does seem like it's um you know an altercation between the two parts now we don't know what the motivation for that is but certainly whatever happened in that cockpit caused the aircraft to depart from its normal flight path it was cruising at 34 000 feet and then it that was a huge drop in altitude so that does indicate that's not something the aircraft would ordinarily do that would require human intervention for that.

10:25So it's not a good outcome. Emma, would it have required human intervention then to stabilise that plane, meaning one of those pilots, those relief pilots who were in the back of the plane, would have been able to get to the front of the plane to stabilise it? Can we read that into the fact that the plane was able to stabilise after plunging? Yes. I mean, once the aircraft has been put into a sort of nosedive or steep descent like that, it would require intervention in order to be, and there is a report that the relief pilot was the one who pulled back on the yoke, which is the control, how you control the aircraft in that particular aircraft type, was able to pull back on the yoke and stabilise the flight path and level out that descent.

11:10But, you know, if you then think about what was happening, You're in a very steep descent trying to wrestle people out of their pilot seats. And these other two pilots were reportedly sitting at the back of the aircraft. There's an awful lot to happen in a very short space of time. So it will have been terrifying, particularly for the two pilots on board who will have known that something was wrong and will have known they had to intervene and do something about it. Emma, we know after September 11th that only people flying the plane can enter the cockpit. So how would anyone else have gotten in?

11:47Well, there are two ways that you can go into the cockpit. One is for the pilots to let you in by unlocking the door. And that's a normal procedure. So if cabin crew want to enter the cockpit, which they're allowed to do during a flight, then they call the pilots, tell them they're going to come in, and then the pilots will unlock the door and allow them to come in. So opening it from the inside. And the other way is there is a way for crew to enter the flight deck if they had to in an emergency. But that's not something that would be accessible to passengers. So the reports we're getting are that the passengers broke into the cockpit.

12:26But I'm not sure if that is speculation at the moment. We don't know exactly what happened. The fact that the pilot had called for help would indicate to me that they had perhaps unlocked the cockpit door in order to let somebody in because that's less dangerous than staying in the cockpit with somebody who's wielding a knife, if indeed that's what was happening. OK. And it appears someone dialed or pressed the hijacking code from inside the cockpit. Is that a code you'd use if there was a fight that happened between the pilot and the code pilot? it? Well the code that was initially used was 7700 which is the emergency code that indicates to air traffic control there's a problem with your aircraft and they will clear all other air traffic out of the way and they will prioritise you as a result of that.

13:13The hijack code I've been thinking about this throughout the morning actually if I was in that situation I might not want to alert the other person that I was initiating the hijack code so the fact that it was only very brief indicates that either they were dialing through the numbers to get to the 7-7 code or somebody had put the 7-5 code in which is the hijack code in order to alert air traffic control but maybe then switched it back so that it wasn't too obvious it's very difficult to know and all of this will come out in the investigation Emma thank you very much that was Emma Henderson a former airline captain and aviation expert speaking to us from Scotland And just to say, the BBC News website has just updated to say that a fly Dubai recovering plane is at Tabuk Airport to pick up stranded passengers there.

14:11Coming up, Stevie Wonder's album turns Songs in the Key of Life turns 50. We'll hear a tribute to it. This was the culmination of a extremely unprecedented, prolific run of records that Stevie Wonder made in the mid 70s. It was like a four year period where he knocked out five records that were all just absolutely brilliant. And it culminated with this ginormous, you know, two album plus an extra EP set, Songs in the Key of Life. That's coming up just over half an hour's time. And the stories we're tracking in our newsroom this hour, an Israel-bound flight has landed safely in Saudi Arabia after a fight broke out between pilots triggering a hijacking alert.

14:51And Russia's carried out another massive overnight attack on Ukraine's Kiev region, hitting energy infrastructure and residential buildings.

15:10you're listening to news hour on the bbc world service we heard several hours ago that several executives from the largest ai companies in the united states have signed a voluntary agreement to put controls on artificial intelligence u.s president donald trump made the announcement on Tuesday after a meeting with tech bosses at the White House. Speaking with reporters afterwards, he said government-imposed guardrails were not needed to regulate AI. These models are very complex. And again, I believe they're going to be used for the good. And when they're not, we're going to be able to nab them.

15:43But there's going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect. We're also thinking about forming a committee of sorts, where we put maybe 10 people on that committee. It could be from that group. so the committee can watch over the whole enterprise. Well, this news from Washington comes as we're hearing fresh reports that a popular Chinese AI tool, Kimi, was persuaded to explain to researchers how to make biological weapons and how to carry out assassinations. Kimi is made by Moonshot, a major AI company based in Beijing. It says it's now in discussion with MindGuard, the research company that revealed it could convince Kimi to evade its own safety limits.

16:28Peter Garrigan is the founder of MindGuard. He joins me now. Peter, tell us what MindGuard discovered about Moonshot's Kimi models. So MindGuard was able to successfully jailbreak these models. And jailbreaking is when you remove the safety constraints of AI models. What happened is that you can get the model to talk freely about topics, including making sarin gas, planning assassinations, creating weaponry, but also how to conduct cyber attacks against other users. Remarkable. Do you know if the suggestions your researchers were able to get from Kimmy on how to carry out an assassination or how to make a bioweapon would actually work?

17:14So I am a university professor, but unfortunately I'm not the head of the League of Assassins. So I can't actually comment about whether those steps and also like in chemistry, they would do. I am, however, an expert in cybersecurity and the actions it took and the information it gave to us were incredibly credible in terms of actually the cyber attacks can, will and actually did work against itself. So Moonshot, that's the company based in Beijing that makes Kimmy, has said it's now in discussions with your company. Can you tell me about those discussions and Moonshot's response? Yes, great. So it's very common for a company like MindGuard is when you discover these vulnerabilities, you tell and inform the vendor to help them fix it.

18:00So not being held at gunpoint, it actually is we want to help them make their technology better. So we sent them the instructions about the type of issues we found to work with it. They were quite silent for a long time until the story broke today. They did come back to us just before. And now we're sharing the type of issues we found and hopefully they'll go towards actually fixing it. How important is it that this model that Kimi was made by a Chinese company? Do you think that AI bots originating in China are more dangerous somehow? My personal view, it's not. Every single AI model has its weakness in different ways.

18:40if you look at the news about these models and even the vendors themselves are now talking about after many years about weaponization and doing cyber attacks it's a fundamental limitation but also a capability models themselves if you have a piece of software that's highly capable and make patterns it can be used for good things but also used for bad things as well okay peter thank you very much for speaking with us. That was Peter Garrigan, founder of MindGuard, speaking about that latest news that a Chinese-made AI bot. It was able to, the researchers were able to break through its guardrails.

19:23Let's go to the US state of Tennessee now, where in less than two hours' time, Krista Pike is set to be executed by injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured, and murdered another teenager, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who they met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Pike's legal team has been fighting nonstop to halt the execution on several grounds we'll hear more about in a moment. But on Monday, Tennessee's Governor Bill Lee denied her clemency petition, and yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to stop the execution on the grounds.

20:02It would be unconstitutionally cruel. There is one chance Pike's execution could be stopped if Tennessee's federal court of appeal accepts her team's last-minute arguments for the case to be re-examined. But if that fails, she'll be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. A warning to our audience here, they might find parts of our next interview distressing. Professor Sandra Babcock is an expert on gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School in New York State who has worked on Krista Pike's defense. Professor Babcock, I know that you are fighting to prevent this execution.

20:44What are the three main factors you say mean that Krista Pike deserves clemency? Thank you for that question. Krista is a very, very unique person in the sense that she was only 18 at the time of the crime that landed her on death row. And she was also a survivor of extreme child sexual abuse and rape. She had, at the time of the crime, untreated bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder brought about by her history of sexual violence. And all of that information was relevant to understanding the crime that she committed. It was a very vicious crime, though. Colleen Slemmer's body was mutilated.

21:46The mother of Colleen Slemmer has said she wants the execution to be carried out. Can you understand that? Yeah, of course I can understand that. I think anytime someone harms someone we love, we want to inflict pain upon them. That is a very natural human instinct. But the death penalty and the legal system are not designed as vehicles for personal vengeance. The death penalty, at least in theory, is supposed to be reserved for the most irredeemable and depraved killers, people who have no chance of redemption. That does not describe an 18-year-old teenager who was struggling with the consequences of rape and untreated mental illness at the time of the crime.

22:38You've said you don't think that Krista Pike would get the same sentence today. I do not. For one thing, as an 18-year-old, we know now that her brain was no different than a 17-year-old. And in fact, Krista was an immature 18-year-old. When you look at pictures of her, when you see video of her, she still had acne on her face. She had stuffed animals in her jail cell four years after she was imprisoned. She was someone who we now know lacked the capacity of an adult to understand the consequences of their actions and to rein in their impulses. That, combined with her history of sexual violence, would have led a prosecutor not to seek the death penalty or a jury not to impose it.

23:33Okay, Sandra Babcock, thank you for speaking with us. Sandra Babcock speaking to us there about Krista Pike's execution in Tennessee, which is scheduled to go ahead in about 90 minutes' time. We'll keep you up to date if there are any legal breakthroughs or a stay of that execution. You're listening to NewsHour on the BBC World Service. Please stay with us.

24:32We'll be right back. to add John Deere certified pre-owned equipment and more options to their lineup can shop at machinefinder.com. Booyah! It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

25:16Welcome back to NewsHour. Coming up, a special report from Gaza, where the BBC has been filming across the summer to see how children are coping despite the conflict there. We'll hear from the father of six-year-old Raziel, who's had more than 20 operations since an airstrike injured her in late July and killed her sister. I asked them, where is Ratil? Nobody answered. I asked my wife's cousins, where is Ratil? They said, in the morgue. I couldn't hold myself together. They used to play together all the time. It's only been two or three days since she started eating again. I'm afraid that if my daughter stays in Gaza, she'll die.

25:59That coming up in a few minutes time. But first, Nigerian dancer Benjamin Daniel Gabriel has danced for 168 hours, that's seven days, in an attempt to set a new world record for the longest dance marathon by an individual. The attempt took place at Freedom Park in Lagos with crowds gathering over the week to watch him and dance along to Afrobeats, Zouk and jazz. His claim to the title has now been submitted to the Guinness World Records and is awaiting confirmation. Benjamin, also known as Ben Dancer, spoke to the BBC just after he'd finished. I'm feeling great. I'm feeling fulfilled. I was on tour a couple of times with my band, which is Madi Kuti.

26:45So Madi Kuti is the grandson of Fela and Fela is the originator of the Afrobeat genre. So I look at how the eels and then the things that affect the dance industry here, over here in Nigeria and Africa. And I feel we need to bring a change. And then I ask myself, if I have to cause a change, then the change has to begin with me.

27:12I needed to show the world the beauty of African culture through dance because for the entire seven days I was wearing different outfits, different costumes, different traditional attires from different parts of Africa. Most of the dances are African indigenous dances. So they were dances from different cultures of Nigeria. to show this form of unity. Because while I was dancing, different tribes from different parts of Africa came. In fact, some of my friends came from the Republic. Some came from Paris. Some came from London too as well. Had different people from different parts of the world.