UAE court sentences 3 people to death in killing of Israeli Moldovan rabbi Zvi Kogan
The state-run WAM news agency announced the verdicts of the three after a trial in Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals' State Security Chamber. It said a fourth person received a life sentence.
It did not identify those charged. However, three Uzbek nationals had been arrested in Turkey and brought back to the UAE over the slaying in November.
Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, ran a kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords. The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. He was buried in Israel.
The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Capital cases are rare in the country of 9 million people, but executions typically come swiftly after defendants have their appeals exhausted.
Gambrell writes for the Associated Press.
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