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

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates said on Monday that 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 killing of Zvi Kogan.

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

The agreement has lasted for more than a year with sky-high regional tensions triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, following months of fighting with the Hezbollah militant group, have sparked 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. State-run news agency WAM carried photos of the three men, their faces obscured. It is not clear whether charges have been brought against the men.

It was not immediately clear whether the three men had lawyers in the United Arab Emirates, an autocratic nation of seven sheikdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. The Uzbek consulate in Dubai did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.

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

Iran, which backs Hamas and Hezbollah, has also threatened to retaliate against Israel a wave of air strikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack. Iran’s embassy in Abu Dhabi denied that Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s killing.

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

Western officials believe Iran is running intelligence operations in the United Arab Emirates and monitoring 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, although Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd in 2020 from Dubai and took him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.

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

Kogan’s wife, Rivky, an American 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 on Sunday, US National Security Council spokesman 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 wider Jewish community and all who mourn his loss,” Savett said.