The United Arab Emirates on Monday sentenced three people to death for the abduction and killing of an Israeli Moldovan rabbi last November, a case that raised concerns about the safety of the country’s small but growing Jewish community.
The U.A.E.’s state news agency, WAM, reported that the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals’ State Security Chamber decided on the death penalty for the “premeditated murder with terrorist intention” of Rabbi Zvi Kogan.
A fourth person was sentenced for aiding in the crime — in what way the government did not say — to a prison term, followed by deportation from the country. The defendant was sentenced to life in prison, but typically that means being released after 20 years or more.
The authorities did not disclose the identities of those sentenced, but the U.A.E. Interior Ministry previously identified three people accused of murder as Olimboy Tohirovich and Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, both 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33, all Uzbek nationals. State media released photos of them, blindfolded and shackled at the wrists and ankles, after their extradition from Turkey.
“The defendants had tracked and murdered the victim,” WAM said in its report on Monday. “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.”
The report did not quote the authorities offering a motive for the murder of Rabbi Kogan, 28, or any further details about how he was kidnapped and later killed.
The rabbi disappeared on Nov. 21 and was last reported seen in Dubai, the most populous of the nation’s seven emirates, according to an Israeli official who spoke to The New York Times at the time. Israeli news outlets reported that his car had been found abandoned in Al Ain, a city in the adjacent emirate of Abu Dhabi, on the border with Oman. His body was found three days later.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel denounced the killing at the time as an “antisemitic terrorist act.”
Rabbi Kogan was a dual citizen of Israel and Moldova and had worked in the Emirates as part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic branch of Orthodox Judaism that conducts Jewish outreach around the world. He also helped manage the Rimon kosher supermarket in Dubai’s affluent Al Wasl Road neighborhood. This month, the supermarket announced that it was moving and would accept only delivery orders for the time being.
The Israeli Embassy and Consulate in the Emirates did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the sentences.
The kidnapping and killing of the rabbi rattled the small Jewish population of the Emirates; estimates of its number range from hundreds to a few thousand. More Israelis and Jews have made the Emirates their home since the country formally established ties with Israel in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
Emirati authorities said on Monday that the capital sentences “are automatically subject to appeal” to the criminal division of the Federal Supreme Court. Cases of capital punishment are rare in the Emirates, but executions are carried out promptly after defendants exhaust their appeals.
