The FBI has assigned its crack team of criminal profilers — known for its work tracking serial killers — to delve into the life of the EgyptAir co-pilot suspected of deliberately flying Flight 990 into the Atlantic, The Post has learned.
Gameel el-Batouty was caught on the plane’s cockpit voice recorder uttering a prayer often used as a Muslim’s last words — just before the craft went into its fatal dive.
Probers want to find out if Batouty had a reason to commit suicide — or sabotage the flight.
New information released by the National Transportation Safety Board bolstered the view that there was a struggle in the cockpit over the controls.
The plane’s data recorder shows that the pilot-side elevators, or tail flaps, were positioned to lift the plane’s nose out of its dive — while the elevators on the co-pilot’s side were positioned to hold the jet in its downward plunge.
Federal sources said profilers at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Center in Quantico, Va., will make it a top priority to determine if there could have been a political dimension to the tragedy — if Batouty’s religious beliefs may have veered into fanaticism or if he had any ties to militant Islamic groups.
Officials have said there is no evidence so far to suggest any link to terrorism in the crash.
The profilers also want to know if Batouty, 59, had financial troubles, and they’ll be looking into the possibility he may have been disgruntled over nearing retirement after 12 years with EgyptAir and never making captain, with its much-larger salary.
The Quantico profilers have begun their work, even though the FBI has not yet been designated the lead agency in the probe — out of deference to Egyptian objections over the suicide theory.
Egypt’s top aviation officials were dispatched to Washington to examine evidence from the Oct. 31 crash that killed 217 people.
Sources said the Boeing 767’s voice recorder captured Batouty — who was alone in the cabin after the pilot left — saying in Arabic: “I made my decision now. I put my faith in God’s hands.”
Moments later, probers believe, he shut off the jet’s autopilot and said a prayer, known as the shihada, which begins, “There is no God but God.”
The shihada is significant because it can be interpreted as a declaration of faith and can also be spoken by someone who believes death is approaching.
It is uttered “when something very special is about to happen,” said Islamic scholar Khalid Duran.
Terrorism experts noted that the prayer is spoken by Hamas suicide bombers before attacks.
But Egyptian authorities have argued that the shihada is used commonly by devout Egyptians — and that Batouty must have noticed something wrong with the plane that made him utter the prayer.
The suicide theory has met with outraged reactions in Egypt — where it is widely considered to be an insult to national pride and religious sensibilities.
Batouty’s relatives in the United States and Egypt said he was a devoted family man and devout Muslim who had recently made the haj, or religious pilgrimage, to Mecca.
A relative in Los Angeles, Moshem Hamza, said of Batouty: “He valued life. In Islam, we have a belief that anyone who commits suicide will be eternally punished. So that in itself is a deterrent.”
In Cairo, Batouty’s 22-year-old son, Mohammed, said his father asked him to meet the flight at the Cairo airport because he was bringing back gifts and tires for his son’s car.
Meanwhile, a $50 million lawsuit was filed yesterday against EgyptAir and planemaker Boeing on behalf of the family of Ghassan Koujan, 38, a Paterson, N.J., chef who died in the crash. It was the first lawsuit to arise out of the tragedy.