Iran rejects involvement in murder of Israeli rabbi in UAE
The Iranian Embassy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said it categorically rejects the allegations of Iran’s involvement in the murder of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi in the Persian Gulf Arab country.
It came after the UAE-based rabbi Tzvi Kogan, 28, was found dead by security services last week, following what Israeli officials and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group he was affiliated with called an anti-Semitic attack.
His corpse was discovered in the Emirati city of Al-Ain, which borders Oman, though it was not clear if he was killed there or elsewhere.
Ayoob Kara, a member of Israel’s ruling right-wing Likud party, who promotes economic relations between Israel and the Arab world, claimed there were indications that investigators suspected Iranian involvement.
However, the UAE said on Monday police have arrested three Uzbek nationals for the killing of the Israeli rabbi.
The statement from the country’s Interior Ministry offered no motive for the slaying of Kogan, though an Israeli foreign ministry official later said that he simply had been “killed because of who he was.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has denounced the killing of the rabbi as a “heinous anti-Semitic terrorist act” and said Israel would do everything it could to bring those responsible to justice.