On Monday, the United Arab Emirates sentenced three people to the death penalty for the abduction and murder of Israeli Moldovarabi in November last year.
WAM, the UAE state news agency, reported that the National Security Office of the Federal Court of Appeals for Abu Dhabi has decided the death penalty for “deliberate murder with the intention of a terrorist.”
The fourth was sentenced to subsequent deportation for helping the government in how the government didn't say it to prison term. The defendant was sentenced to life in prison, but usually means that he would be released after 20 years or more.
Authorities did not reveal the identity of those sentenced, but the UAE Home Ministry previously identified the three people accused of murder as Olimboy Tohirovich and Mahmujon Abdullahim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33, all Uzbek citizens. State media released photos of him blindfolded and bound by his wrists and ankles after handing over from Türkiye.
“The defendant pursued and killed the victim,” Wam said in his report Monday. “The evidence presented to the court by national security prosecution included detailed confessions of the defendant on the crime of murder and temptation, as well as details of the forensic reports, post-mortem review results, and the measures used in the testimony of the crime and witnesses.”
The report did not cite authorities providing the motive for the murder of 28-year-old Rabbi Kogan, or further details on how he was lured and later killed.
The rabbis disappeared on November 21, and was reported to have been seen last in Dubai, the most populous of the country's seven emirates, according to Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times at the time. Israeli press reported that his car was found to have been abandoned in Al Ain, the city of Abu Dhabi's adjacent emirates, on the border with Oman. His body was discovered three days later.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office denounced the murders at the time as “anti-Semitic terrorist law.”
Rabbi Kogan was a dual citizen of Israel and Moldova and worked for Emirates as part of the Chabad Lubavich movement, a branch of the Orthodox Jewish Hasid, which provides Jewish outreach around the world. He also helped manage the Limon Kosher supermarket in Dubai's wealthy Al Wasl Road district. This month, supermarkets announced they were in operation and for the time being it would only accept delivery orders.
The Emirates' Israeli embassy and consulate did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
The rabbis' invitation and murder rattled the small Jewish population of the Emirates. Estimates of that number range from hundreds to thousands. More Israelis and Jews have made the Emirates their home since they officially established relations with Israel in the 2020 Abraham Agreement.
Emirati authorities said Monday that the capital's sentences will “appeal” and that they will “appeal” to the federal Supreme Court's criminal division. Although cases of the death penalty are rare in the Emirates, executions are carried out swiftly after the accused runs out of appeal.
