By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/ABU DHABI (Worthy News) – The United Arab Emirates said Monday police arrested three Uzbek nationals for the killing of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi in an assassination that Israel called an “antisemitic terror act.”
The Emirati interior ministry said all legal powers would be used “to respond decisively and without leniency to any actions or attempts that threaten societal stability.”
Zvi Kogan was found dead Sunday in the Emirati city of Al Ain, which borders Oman, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Abu Dhabi, said former Israeli Druze politician Ayoob Kara and other sources.
The ultra-Orthodox rabbi, who went missing Thursday, was a representative of Chabad, a religious movement of Hasidic Jews with communities, synagogues, and other institutions in many countries.
The 28-year-old also ran a kosher grocery store in Dubai, a futuristic city to which Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the killing of Kogan, who also held Moldovan citizenship. He warned that “The State of Israel will use all means at its disposal to bring the criminals responsible for his death to justice.”
Soon after, the UAE’s Interior Ministry identified three arrested men: Olimboy Tohirovich, 28; Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28; and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33.
IRAN RESPONSIBLE?
Israel has suggested that Iran ordered the killing of the rabbi, perhaps in response to recent Israeli attacks against the Islamic Republic after Tehran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at the Jewish nation.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency carried images of the three arrested men, blindfolds covering their faces in prison uniforms and flip flops.
The Interior Ministry said the preliminary probe into the men is “in preparation for referring them to the public prosecution for further investigation. ”
It wasn’t immediately clear if the three men had lawyers or had sought consular assistance in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.
UAE’s fast move in bringing alleged suspects to justice underscored the bilateral cooperation under the Abraham Accords despite soaring regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza triggered by the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel.
Yet Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon after months of fighting with the Hezbollah group angered Emiratis, Arab nationals, and other critics living in the UAE.
With the war ongoing, it was not clear if diplomatic cooperation between Israel and the USE would be maintained for long.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
A remote Indigenous community in western Canada was reeling Friday after a grizzly bear mauled a group of schoolchildren and teachers on a forest trail in British Columbia, injuring 11 people — two of them critically, according to local officials.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was expected to join a high-level phone call Friday on a U.S.-Russian proposal to end the war in Ukraine, amid escalating deadly attacks in the embattled nation, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Delegates assessed the damage from a fire that briefly spread through several pavilions at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil on Thursday, the latest setback for the gathering known as COP30.
A strong 5.5-magnitude earthquake shook central Bangladesh on Friday, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 300, authorities and local media said, as buildings in the capital Dhaka swayed violently and panicked residents fled into the streets.
Authorities say a boiler at a glue-making factory in eastern Pakistan exploded on Friday, killing at least 18 people and injuring 21 others, underscoring broader concerns over safety standards in the Islamic nation.
At least scores of students were abducted from a Catholic mission school in Nigeria’s troubled North Central region early Friday, just days after gunmen attacked a church, killing two people and taking dozens of worshippers hostage, officials and witnesses said.
The Israel Defense Forces announced Thursday that it uncovered one of the most extensive and sophisticated Hamas tunnel systems discovered to date, a sprawling underground route running more than seven kilometers (4.3 miles) and plunging approximately 25 meters (82 feet) underground beneath Rafah.