UAE court sentences 3 people to death in killing of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Kogan

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A court in the United Arab Emirates has sentenced three people to death for the killing of Israeli-Moldovan national Zvi Kogan, state media reported Monday.

The state-run news agency WAM announced the verdicts after a trial in Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals’ State Security Chamber. It said a fourth person who aided the killing received a life sentence.

It did not identify those charged. However, three Uzbek nationals had been arrested in Turkey and brought back to the UAE over the killing in November.

“The defendants had tracked and murdered the victim,” the WAM report said. “The evidence presented by the State Security Prosecution to the court included the defendants’ detailed confessions to the crimes of murder and kidnapping, along with forensic reports, post-mortem examination findings, details of the instruments used in the crime and witness testimonies.”

Authorities in the UAE have not offered a motive for the killing, nor any details about how Kogan was kidnapped and slain. However, it came amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has inflamed anger across the wider Muslim world.

Israel and the UAE have maintained their diplomatic ties, albeit strained by the war, with Israel keeping a consulate in Dubai and an embassy in Abu Dhabi.

While not directly blaming Iran, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have referred to an “axis of evil” as being responsible for Kogan’s killing — a phrase Israel has used to refer to Iran and its allies.

Iran’s embassy in Abu Dhabi has denied Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s slaying, and the UAE has not made the allegation. However, Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Iranian intelligence services have previously carried out kidnappings in the UAE. Iran also has used criminal gangs to target dissidents and its enemies.

Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, 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 UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.

Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. He was buried in Israel.

The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Capital cases are rare in the country of 9 million people, but executions typically come swiftly after defendants have their appeals exhausted. Typically, the UAE uses firing squads to execute the condemned.

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press.