Zvi Kogan. Photo: LinkedIn via i24 News

i24 News – The United Arab Emirates sentenced three Uzbek nationals to death for the murder last November of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, according to reports on Sunday. This has not yet been confirmed by Emirati authorities.

The suspects were arrested in Turkey shortly after the murder, and then before being extradited to the Emirates. A conversation between one of the convicts and his mother, published on X, reveals that the son informs his mother about the sentence pronounced against him.

“Upon their arrest, the three men were suspected of serious crimes punishable by death,” the judicial report said at the time. Rabbi Kogan, who served as assistant to the Chief Rabbi of the Emirates, Levi Yitzchak Duchman, is thought to have been targeted by the murderers, who are suspected of acting on behalf of Iran. According to the investigators, the assailants had been monitoring the victim from his workplace, the kosher supermarket in Abu Dhabi.

“The kidnappers followed the rabbi after his work day before fleeing to Turkey,” a source informed with the details of the case said. The victim’s vehicle was found about an hour and a half drive from Dubai. An Israeli source told the Israeli national broadcaster Kan 11 that Kogan was abducted by “terrorists.” The case caused a lot of emotion within the Jewish community of the Emirates, officially established after the Abraham Accords in 2020.