Israeli-Moldovan citizen goes missing in UAE, investigation launched, Israel says

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(Reuters) -An investigation has been launched into the disappearance of an Israeli-Moldovan dual citizen who lives in the United Arab Emirates and has been missing since Thursday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said on Saturday.

It said in a statement that authorities in the Gulf country had opened the investigation based on information that the man’s disappearance was related to “a terrorist incident”, without providing further details.

The missing man was identified as Zvi Kogan, a representative in the UAE of Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish group that has chapters around the world and seeks to build links with non-affiliated and secular Jews or other sects of Judaism.

Chabad’s world headquarters in the United States said in a statement that Kogan, a rabbi serving on behalf of the group in the UAE, had gone missing in Dubai on Thursday.

The UAE’s state news agency said the interior ministry was searching for the missing man and investigating his disappearance, without mentioning his Israeli citizenship.

Chabad UAE declined to comment.

The group’s branch in the UAE supports thousands of Jewish visitors and residents in the country, providing religious and social services to Jewish people across the Gulf region, according to its website.

The UAE became the most prominent Arab state in 30 years to establish formal ties with Israel under a U.S.-brokered agreement in 2020, dubbed the Abraham Accords. It has maintained the relationship during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

(Reporting by Emily Rose and Andrew Mills; Writing by Hatem Maher; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Helen Popper and William Mallard)