Latest / The Front / Is terrorism morphing to find a new front line?

Transcript

Is terrorism morphing to find a new front line? · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Friday, October 2, 2026. An incredible mid-air cockpit attack
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and claims of an Iranian cell lurking outside a military base.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: From the Middle East to Britain, authorities are on high
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: alert after two alleged terrorism incidents. Today, what really happened
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: with RAF Fairford and FlyDubai 1073? 8.44am, September 30. A
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Squawk 7700 distress call from Fly Dubai Flight FZ1073 reaches
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: air traffic control in Saudi Arabia. Then it switches to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a Squawk 7500 code.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Hijacking.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: About two and a half hours into its journey from
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Dubai to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the plane
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: has dropped about 5,000 metres in under two minutes. 174 passengers,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: most of them Israelis travelling home, look around as the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: aircraft shakes. Some weep, some cry out. In the cockpit,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Captain Smit Machchar has been stabbed. His co-pilot, an Amani national,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: is the only other person on the flight deck. Bleeding
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and in pain, the pilot manages to release the cockpit door.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Passengers rush in. A 30-minute struggle ensues. One of the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: passengers would later tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: he subdued the co-pilot. Two of the people on board
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: tend to the wounds of those injured, while two more
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: guard the cockpit. Flight FZ1073 is diverted to Tabuk Airport
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia. Israeli fighter jets are dispatched to shepherd
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the aircraft to its new destination. Two off-duty pilots steer
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the plane to safety. Its wheels hit the tarmac a
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: few minutes before 7am local time. Passengers file into the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: arrivals hall, some of them smeared with blood.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: So the amazing heroism here of the Indian pilot, the
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Israeli passenger and his colleagues and those pilots managed to
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: prevent a 9-11 disaster, because that's what it looks like
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: was happening.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: This is Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to CNN.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: But I'll tell you, to see something like that, to
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: see this amazing coolness of judgment and courage is an
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: unbelievable act of heroism that saved the day.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Passengers and those whose loved ones were on board the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: fly-to-buy flight have spoken to the media about the ordeal.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: And then they told us that's the pilot himself that
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: attacked the other pilot.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Two or three people rushed inside when somebody, I think, screamed, stabbing, stabbing.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: And everyone was screaming.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: There were children crying.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Israeli intelligence has launched an investigation into the incident. One
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: official suggested the co-pilot, motivated by jihadist ideology, planned to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: crash the plane. The official said the co-pilot was being questioned.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The captain is recovering in hospital in Saudi Arabia. No
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: fly-to-buy flights to Israel will operate for the next week
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: at least. In the coming days, Israel will mark the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: third anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: on southern Israel, the single deadliest assault on Jewish people
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: since the Holocaust.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: During the attack, about 1,200 people were killed and 251
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: others were taken hostage.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: More than 7,000 kilometres away, the UK is still reeling
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: from the apparent foiling of an alleged terror plot at
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a Royal Air Force base south of Birmingham.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Five men were arrested in Welford on Sunday morning after
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: reports of three vehicles travelling towards the airbase at 12.45am.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: They were detained on suspicion of offences under the Explosives
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Act and preparation of a terrorist act.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: They're all London residents. This is the information we have.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Our reporter, Helen Trinker, is there.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: You get a sense when you're in London of the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: hybrid warfare that in effect is taking place across Europe. Yeah,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: there's a much greater sense, I think, from people that
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: they're on the front line, really.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's go back to what we know about
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: what happened. A farmer was coming home from a party,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I understand, in the early hours of the morning and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: noticed something unusual going on. What did she see and
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: why did that trigger her to call the authorities?
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she was triggered to call 999 eventually because there
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: were three vans parked just at the end of a
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: road in a very, very quiet laneway where it's clearly
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: very bizarre or not that they were there. She called 999,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: everybody came and there were men running around in balaclavas,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: et cetera, all very exciting. But then it turns out
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: that some time before that, One of the alleged perpetrators
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: of this event had sort of got cold feet about
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: it and actually had called 999 themselves so the police
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: were onto it. And that adds to this sort of
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: intrigue and sort of mystery around this whole event because
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: it looks very much as if they were some sort of,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: you know, proxies. They'd been perhaps paid money by their
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: sort of handlers or recruiters. and had gone to the
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: area thinking that they were there to steal petrol. That's
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: kind of one of the theories. When this guy realised
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: they were up to something else, he got cold feet
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: and effectively turned them all in.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: It's a bit like an episode of Slow Horses, Helen,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a very dramatic scene in the middle of the night
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: in country England, isn't it?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really bizarre.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: It's particularly bizarre when you see up there, of course,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: this typical quintessential sort of English countryside. It's on the
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: edge of the Cotswolds. They say they've got the best
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: of it. They've got all the beautiful area without the tourists.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: But lots of people from London have bought beautiful stone
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: houses up there. It's a really gorgeous area and very,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: very quiet, of course. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, actually
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: did say that the UK government now has a belief
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: that there's an Iranian background to it, that the Iranians
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: are somehow at least involved in this.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when police arrive, there are three white vans
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: with what appear to be counterfeit logos of a legitimate
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: fuel company, right? And They send in the bomb squad,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: can't find any explosives, but they do find some fuel
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: in those vans. Then these five men are very quickly arrested.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, Donald Trump is kind of bragging about
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: how the Americans and the British work together to have
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: these people under surveillance and then arrest them. This space
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: is significant because that's where the American B-1 bombers are
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that have been carrying out missions over Iran. Was that true,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: do you think, what Donald Trump said, that this was
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a group of people who were under surveillance by these allies?
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: I think the best guess is that there was a
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: heightened sense of security around the base. What I was
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: told when I was there from a lot of residents
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: was they had noticed in the last week before this
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: event a great deal of activity, heightened efforts at the
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: base for security. So there's something going on. So I
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: think Trump's reacting to that. It doesn't appear to me,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: from what I've learned, that these particular people were under surveillance.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: So people said to me, you know, in the weeks
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: before there was some plans, you know, that bombers had
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: been moved from one end of the very large 500
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: hectare base from one end to the other and things
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: like that were going on. This may be just a
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: moment in time where there's heightened awareness anyway because, you know,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: we're coming up to the October 7th anniversary so there's
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: all those sorts of things to take into play.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: So five men arrested on suspicion of potential explosives-related offences
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and or preparation of a terrorist attack. They've now been
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: released on police bail, which suggests that the police don't
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: actually think that they were terrorists. Is that a fair
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: enough interpretation?
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, well, that's absolutely the only interpretation I think you
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: can make. There's been huge criticism of that, as you know,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: not just from the Americans. Donald Trump said we wouldn't
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: have let them go. Burnham said yesterday that he had
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: complete confidence in the way the security services were handling it.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: The authorities have definitely said they're under very stringent bail restrictions,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: but even so, I think you'd have to be pretty
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: sure that there's not something else going on for them
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: to be released.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: But even if you thought you were just stealing petrol,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you know, to accept money from someone you don't necessarily
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: know who they are, to approach a military base in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: a van with a counterfeit logo on it, clearly doing
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the wrong thing. I mean, it doesn't seem like the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: kind of people who should be out on bail, at
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: least until they know exactly what was going on, right?
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: I'm with you, Clara. I think it's really fascinating. But
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: they are British citizens. They're young. They've been paid money.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: This is what's happening, to be honest. We've heard a
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: lot about it in Europe as well. The Russians are
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: getting onto telegram and social sites and recruiting young people
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: to do various actions. For example, you hear that in
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: Poland people are being recruited. to go out and sort
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: of light a little fire somewhere, put graffiti up, you know,
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: do this sort of what's now obviously being called hybrid warfare. Now,
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: this particular event's not being said as hybrid warfare in
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: that way, but it is part of a process of
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: a way of recruiting that is actually becoming apparently much
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: more common.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Coming up, more of my conversation with Helen Trinker. Thank you.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: That idea of hiring local criminals to do something that
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: they might not necessarily understand the gravity of is what
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Australian officials believe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps did here
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in Australia in the summer of anti-Semitic attacks that we saw,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: including on a synagogue in Melbourne and a deli in Bondi.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: In the interim, of course, there's been this very scary
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: alleged attempted hijacking of a fly Dubai flight that was
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: bound for Tel Aviv. What do you think we can
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: draw from all this kind of heightened awareness and uncertainty now, Helen?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Does it make you feel less safe living in Britain,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: for example? No.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I don't here in London, in my kitchen.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I think going up there made me realise just what
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: a potential target that base is. It has to be
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: a target. People around say, look, we're not massively worried
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: about it, but obviously it's a target. And I suppose
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: leading up to October 7, there is definitely a heightened
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: awareness of potential threats to bases and potential threats to
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: other infrastructure.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Helen Trinker is an Associate Editor with The Australian.