The United Arab Emirates on Monday published the names and photographs of three suspects it is holding in the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, a UAE-based Chabad emissary whose body was found early Sunday.
Israel has called the murder an antisemitic terror attack. Chabad said Sunday that Kogan had been "murdered by terrorists."
All three men are Uzbek nationals, according to the UAE Interior Ministry — Olimpi Toirovich, 28; Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28; and Azizbek Kamlovich, 33.
The images showed the men handcuffed and blindfolded, dressed in blue prison uniforms.
The ministry described the three as "the perpetrators of the murder of the Moldovan citizen." Kogan held dual Israeli-Moldovan citizenship.
The suspects could face capital punishment, according to several Hebrew media reports.
Kogan, 28, who worked in the UAE for the Orthodox Jewish group Chabad, which seeks to support Jewish life for thousands of Jewish visitors and residents in the Gulf Arab state, vanished in Dubai, where he ran a kosher grocery store, on Thursday.
A plane carrying his body landed at Ben Gurion airport on Monday evening, a spokeswoman for the Israel Airports Authority told AFP.
Kogan’s funeral was set to take place at 11 p.m. Monday at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, following a procession from Kfar Chabad in central Israel, set to depart at 8 p.m.
His body was found in the Emirati city of Al Ain, which borders Oman, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Abu Dhabi, Israeli authorities announced early Sunday.
The Ynet news site reported early Sunday that Kogan’s car was found abandoned in Al Ain. It added, without citing sources, that there were signs of a struggle in the vehicle.
Officials suspect a number of Uzbek citizens recruited by Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
assaulted the rabbi and later fled to
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
, that report said.
The three suspects were not arrested in the UAE, a Channel 12 report said Monday. The operation to find and arrest them spread across several countries, according to the report.
Ynet reported Monday that they were likely extradited from Turkey to the UAE, without Israeli involvement.
The UAE on Monday stressed "the determination of the competent security authorities to quickly take the necessary measures to uncover the details of the incident, its circumstances and motives, and to harness their human and professional capabilities, expertise and technical capabilities that led to the arrest of the perpetrators."
The Emirati Interior Ministry had announced on Sunday the arrests of three people involved in the killing of Kogan.