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 AP reports. 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 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 Olimboy Tohirovich, 28, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33. Israeli media reports, citing unnamed security officials, had alleged Uzbeks were involved in Kogan's killing. Uzbeks and other transnational criminal gangs 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 has 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.
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