In her first interview since being freed from two and a half years of captivity in Iraq, Israeli-Russian dual citizen Elizabeth Tsurkov, 38, described methods of torture and abuse she faced at the hands of her captors, Kataib Hezbollah, in her interview with the New York Times published Wednesday.
Tsurkov, who was released in September after her initial abduction from Baghdad in March 2023, was conducting research for her doctoral degree at Princeton University at the time of her kidnapping.
Tsurkov was beaten “senseless”, hung from the ceiling, and electrocuted, according to the report. She was forced into physically challenging positions, causing injuries to her back and shoulders. She had lost consciousness on multiple occasions while being tortured, only to be woken up with water on her face and continued torture. At the hands of this Irani-backed militia, Tsurkov recalled a marathon of psychological and physical torment.
Some of her worst treatment was in her first few months, where she not only received countless beatings, but was sexually assaulted by her captors, the report said.
“They basically used me as a punching bag,” Tsurkov told the NYT.
Tsurkov says that she never saw sunlight during captivity
Kataib Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite militia operating freely in Iraq, is backed by Iran and has been designated a terror organization by the United States, among others. Thousands of militiamen receive salaries from the Iraqi government, pointing to such limited influence by the government over their activity.
Tsurkov was treated at Sheba Medical Center upon her release, and according to the report, the freed woman may have suffered permanent nerve damage. Medical records obtained pertaining to her condition called for long-term rehabilitation.
Her release, similar to that of the Gaza hostages, was initiated through diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration, which reportedly pressed top Iraqi officials relating to her case, “dispatching envoys to Baghdad to demand progress,” the report said.
“I genuinely believe I would have died if they had not engaged so consistently and with such incredible determination,” Tsurkov told the NYT.
Before being held for 903 days, Tsurkov entered Iraq to research the Shiite movement — already a risky move for an Israeli citizen. She traveled on her Russian passport and presented herself as a Russian researcher.
Tsurkov believed her abduction was a setup, initiated by an unkept meeting with a woman at a central Baghdad coffee shop, the report alleged. She described being forced into a black SUV by several men, who responded to her attempts to resist by beating and sexually assaulting her. She was zip-tied, bagged, and driven to a large house, arriving roughly a half-hour after her abduction. According to the report, she would initially have been held for ransom, but when proof was found on her phone of her Israeli identity, they accused her of being an Israeli spy, denied by both Tsurkov and Israeli authorities.
She was allegedly tortured until she made up false confessions to stop the beatings.
The prolonged ordeal of Elizabeth Tsurkov’s captivity included periods of severe physical abuse and constant psychological terror. Tsurkov suffered repeated beatings, which caused her to lose a tooth, stating, "This tooth is missing because of that". This specific abuse occurred in July 2023 at the hands of two jailers, Ibrahim and Maher, after she had initially lied about her past military service.
Throughout her captivity, she was also subjected to constant threats of sexual violence, particularly by the top jailer, "the colonel," who she described as "very filthy and very obsessed with sex,” the report said. Following the Israeli government’s public acknowledgment of her kidnapping in July 2023, she was moved to a new location, believed to be a Kataib Hezbollah base near the Iranian border. There, she was held in complete solitary confinement in a windowless room for more than two years, recalling the deep isolation by saying, "I never saw the sun.”
Coded messages were crucial to Tsurkov. She consciously employed her analytical skills to survive and communicate the truth about her condition. When forced to appear in a propaganda video that aired on Iraqi television in November 2023, she was compelled to falsely claim she worked for Israeli intelligence and the CIA. To signal the cruelty she endured, Tsurkov used coded messages in Hebrew. For example, she falsely claimed to have lived in the Gan HaHashmal neighborhood ("hashmal" means electricity) to signal that she had been electrocuted. She also invented a fictional intelligence handler, "Ethan Nuima," which was a play on the Hebrew word for "torture" (inuim).
After 903 days, Tsurkov was abruptly driven out of the base, blindfolded, and eventually turned over to an Iraqi official in a Baghdad garage. She was taken to an opulent guesthouse where she was examined by female Iraqi doctors—the first women she had seen since her kidnapping.
Upon her arrival in Israel, doctors persuaded Tsurkov to walk into the hospital with assistance, rather than being wheeled in on a gurney, to symbolize that she was returning "unbowed, not as a broken person."