The UAE arrests 3 Uzbek nationals for the killing of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates said Monday police arrested three Uzbek nationals for the killing of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi.

The statement from the country’s Interior Ministry offered no motive for the slaying of Zvi Kogan.

Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.

The agreement has held through more than a year of soaring regional tensions unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the UAE.

The Interior Ministry statement identified the three men as Olimpi Tohirovic, 28, Mahmoud John Abdul Rahim 28, and Azizi Kamilovic, 33. The state-run WAM news agency carried images of the three men, their faces blurred. It did not say if charges had been filed against the men.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the three men had lawyers in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. The Uzbek Consulate in Dubai did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the arrests.

Israeli media reports, citing unnamed security officials, had alleged Uzbeks were involved in Kogan’s killing. Uzbeks previously have been hired in Iranian plots targeting dissidents and others.

Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also been threatening to retaliate against Israel after a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack. Iran’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi denied Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s slaying.

While the UAE statement did not mention Iran, Iranian intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE.

Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, though Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian German national Jamshid Sharmahd in 2020 from Dubai, taking him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.

The Rimon Market, a kosher grocery store that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut Sunday. As the wars have roiled the region, the store has been the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs on the front and back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist stopped by.

Kogan’s wife, Rivky, a U.S. citizen who lived with him in the UAE, is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

In a statement Sunday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett called Kogan’s killing “a horrific crime against all those who stand for peace, tolerance, and coexistence.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE and our prayers are with his family, the Chabad-Lubavitch community, the broader Jewish community, and all who are mourning his loss,” Savett said.

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