People stand next to the coffin of Israeli rabbi, Zvi Kogan, who was found murdered in the United Arab Emirates, during his funeral, in Kfar Habad, Israel, November 25, 2024. Stoyan Nenov / REUTERS

A court in the United Arab Emirates has sentenced three people to death for the killing of Israeli-Moldovan Zvi Kogan, state media reported Monday.

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 who aided the killing 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 killing in November.

"The defendants had tracked and murdered the victim," the WAM report said. "The evidence presented by the State Security Prosecution to the court included the defendants' detailed confessions to the crimes of murder and kidnapping, along with forensic reports, post-mortem examination findings, details of the instruments used in the crime and witness testimonies."

The rabbi was reported missing by his wife after he did not show up to a meeting, the BBC reported.

Authorities in the UAE have not offered a motive for the killing, nor any details about how Kogan was kidnapped and slain. However, it came amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has inflamed anger across the wider Muslim world.

Diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE have remained intact, though strained, by the war as Israel maintains a consulate in Dubai and an embassy in Abu Dhabi.

While not directly blaming Iran, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have referred to an "axis of evil" being responsible for Kogan's killing — a phrase Israel in the past has used to refer to Iran and its allies.

Iran's Embassy in Abu Dhabi has denied Tehran was involved in the rabbi's slaying and the UAE itself has not made the allegation. However, Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Iranian intelligence services also have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE. Iran has used criminal gangs in the past to target dissidents and its enemies.

In November, the UAE's interior ministry announced that security authorities had "begun initial investigations with the three suspects arrested for committing the murder of Moldovan resident Zvi Kogan in preparation for referring to the public prosecution." The ministry also posted images of the suspects on social media.

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.

Chabad said Kogan was abducted in Dubai and driven toward the border with Oman, according to the BBC. His body was found after "security and intelligence agencies from a number of countries coordinated an intensive investigation to locate him," the organization said.

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. Typically, the UAE uses firing squads to execute the condemned.

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