Sputnik

La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, November 25, 2024, p. 25

Tel Aviv., Authorities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) found the body of Zvi Kogan, an Israeli-Moldovan citizen and emissary of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement in the UAE, who had been missing since Thursday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry indicated yesterday.

The UAE Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of three suspects in the rabbi’s murder without giving details.

Kogan, who was rabbi of the Chabad movement in Abu Dhabi, which has representatives from many countries to welcome Jews and Israelis who are passing through or living there, disappeared last Thursday.

The State of Israel will not rest or remain silent until those responsible for this criminal act pay for their actions.said Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement. He added that it was a cowardly and despicable anti-Semitic terrorist crime.

On Saturday, the Israeli security service said it became increasingly likely that Kogan had been kidnapped or killed. And the Mossad (foreign security service) stated that it received information indicating that it was a terrorist incident.

According to Emirati sources who are part of the investigation, a cell operated indirectly by Iran was suspected of being responsible for the rabbi’s death.

According to the same sources, several members of the suspected cell, who had Uzbek citizenship, fled to Türkiye, apparently to hide Iran’s involvement in the case.

The Iranian embassy in the United Arab Emirates expressed its categorical rejection of the accusations of any involvement in the rabbi’s murder.