3 Uzbek nationals arrested for killing of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates said Monday police arrested three Uzbek nationals for the killing of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi, an attack that’s raised concerns for the burgeoning Israeli community in the country.

The statement from the country’s Interior Ministry offered no motive for the slaying of Zvi Kogan, though an Israeli Foreign Ministry official later told The Associated Press that he simply had been “killed because of who he was.”

Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in the 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 the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah terrorist group, have stoked anger among many in the UAE.

The Interior Ministry statement identified the three men as Olimboy Tohirovich, 28, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33. The state-run WAM news agency carried images of the three men, blindfolds covering their faces in prison uniforms and flip flops.

The preliminary probe into the men is “in preparation for referring them to the public prosecution for further investigation,” the Interior Ministry said.

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.