New information provided by the authorities. Three suspects arrested in the United Arab Emirates for the murder of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi are from Uzbekistan, authorities in the Gulf state said on Monday, who are now seeking to determine their motives.
The body of Tzvi Kogan, 28, who had been missing since Thursday in the Emirates where he was based, was found lifeless on Sunday by the Emirati authorities, sparking indignation in Israel. His murder was immediately described as a “heinous act of anti-Semitic terrorism” by the Israeli government. “The competent authorities […] revealed the identity of the three people who carried out the murder and who are of Uzbek nationality: Olimbay Tohirovich (28 years old), Makhmudjon Abdurakhim (28 years old) and Azizbek Kamilovich (33 years old),” wrote the official Emirati agency WAM , citing a press release from the Ministry of the Interior. The security services are now seeking to “elucidate the details, circumstances and motivations of the crime”, the same source added.
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Arrested on Sunday
On Sunday, authorities in the predominantly Muslim Gulf country said three suspects had been arrested after the rabbi’s killing, without giving details of their identities. Rabbi Tzvi Kogan was an emissary of Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic movement with a global missionary commitment aimed at strengthening Jewish identity and bringing Jews closer to their faith.
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This movement indicated that the rabbi’s funeral would take place this Monday around 11:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. GMT) on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, an area of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel since 1967. His body was being repatriated to Israel in the middle of the day, announced the Israeli organization Zaka, responsible for rescuing and collecting the remains of the dead.
The Chief Rabbi of the Emirates Elie Abadie expressed to AFP on Monday the “sadness and shock” of the Jewish community in this Gulf state, adding that the law must be applied with “all its rigor” against the perpetrators. “This tragic and terrorist act of murder of an innocent Jew is an affront to the entire Jewish community and to peaceful coexistence in the UAE,” he said.
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Even before the Emirates announced the arrest of the three suspects, the Israeli government denounced “a heinous act of anti-Semitic terrorism”. “Israel will use all means at its disposal to ensure that justice is done and that those responsible for his death are held accountable,” he said in a statement.
Netanyahu denounces “despicable anti-Semitic terrorist attack”
In a video broadcast by his services during a council of ministers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also denounced a “despicable anti-Semitic terrorist attack” and promised that his country “will use all means and deal with the murderers of Tzvi Kogan and those who sent them. The United Arab Emirates is one of the Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords, promoted by Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
Israeli authorities, however, renewed the warning to Israelis to avoid all non-essential travel to the country and advised citizens already there to take additional precautions. For their part, the United States denounced “a horrible crime against all those who defend peace, tolerance and coexistence”.
Until now extremely discreet in this affair, the Emirati authorities have constantly presented Tzvi Kogan as a Moldovan citizen, hiding his Israeli nationality. A federation of seven emirates tightly controlled by the ruling family, the Emirates prides itself on being a tolerant and safe country. There is no official figure on the number of Jews in the UAE, but an Israeli official told AFP that around 2,000 Israelis resided in the country, with the Jewish community estimated at around 4,000.
The murder of the rabbi particularly affects the Israeli community, whose members remain discreet as regional tensions are exasperated by the war in Gaza, triggered by the attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023.
