Career
A Jordanian security source said Hamada flew from al-Dumair military airport northeast of Damascus and landed at King Hussein Airbase at 11am. Syrian state television said communications were lost with his plane at 10.34am while he was on a training mission near the border with Jordan. Right after he landed, he reportedly removed his Air Force insignia and requested political asylum in Jordan, which the country later granted on "humanitarian grounds".
There had been other defections and desertions from the Syrian military, but no Syrian Air Force pilots had been known to defect with their aircraft.
An anti-Assad activist reached in Syria, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the pilot flew into Jordan after refusing orders to bomb targets in Syria. Opposition sources said he had smuggled his family to Turkey before his defection.
Hamada’s defection raised questions about whether fealty to President Bashar Assad was fraying in the air force, the military branch regarded as closest to the Assad family. Hamada’s defection also created additional tensions between Jordan and Syria.
Syria has demanded the return of the plane and to pilot to Syria from Jordan.
Weighing such a request presented awkward complications for Jordan, which has sought to avoid becoming ensnared in the conflict in Syria, an important trading partner. According to some sources, the MiG-21 aircraft flown by Colonel Hamada was modified as an "Optionally Piloted Aircraft", thought to be used in remotely controlled unmanned configuration for carrying chemical weapons.
