Elizabeth Tsurkov Reveals Harrowing Ordeal in Captivity

Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov spoke to The New York Times in her first interview after S since her release in September from Iraq. After spending 903 days in captivity, she described in detail the torture and abuse she endured at the hands of the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, saying her captors “basically used me as a punching bag.”

Tsurkov, a Princeton doctoral student and Middle East analyst, was abducted in March 2023 in Baghdad, where she was conducting field research on Shiite movement. Her disappearance triggered a months-long diplomatic effort involving Israel, the United States, and Iraq, but her condition and whereabouts remained unknown until recently.

In the interview, Tsurkov recounted relentless beatings, sexual harassment, and electric shocks that left her physically crippled and psychologically scarred. She said she lost a tooth from repeated blows and now spends most of her days lying flat, unable to sit or stand for long due to spinal injuries. “When I lost consciousness, they poured water on me so they could keep going,” she said.

According to her testimony, Tsurkov was lured into a meeting through WhatsApp by a woman claiming to need her help for a mutual acquaintance. As she left a Baghdad café, men seized her, twisting her finger until it nearly broke before forcing her into a car. She was stuffed into a trunk and taken to a house where she was locked in a windowless room for four and a half months.

Her captors initially believed she was a Russian citizen and sought ransom. But after discovering her Israeli identity through her phone, they accused her of espionage. “They asked about my military service. I lied that I worked in a hospital. When they found out the truth, they broke my tooth.”

Tsurkov was tied up, suspended from the ceiling, and beaten repeatedly. She described being shocked with electricity and forced into painful stress positions that damaged her back and shoulders. “I never saw the sun,” she said. 

The abuse worsened after her interrogators discovered she had served in Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate. At one point, she said, a senior officer known as “the colonel” groped her and threatened sexual violence. She invented false confessions, even fabricating the existence of a “French journalist contact” and a supposed Israeli intelligence handler named “Ethan Nuima” a coded play on the Hebrew word inuyim, meaning “torture.”

Medical documents cited by the paper describe extensive injuries consistent with severe torture and note that Tsurkov faces a long recovery process involving physical and psychological rehabilitation.

After nearly a year in her first detention site, she was moved to another facility near the Iranian border, where the conditions gradually improved. Her new guards treated her wounds, allowed her books and a television, and even brought her an Arabic dictionary. She began documenting her experiences in a notebook, material she hoped to use for her academic research.

During Israel’s war with Iran earlier this year, she said the bombings “were close enough to shake the building.” Her captors demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom, but the demand was never taken seriously by Israeli or U.S. officials.

Her captivity ended in early September, when she was abruptly blindfolded, transferred between locations, and handed over to an Iraqi government official who brought her for medical treatment. From there, she was flown to Cyprus and then to Israel with the assistance of a U.S. envoy. “If they [the U.S.] hadn’t acted decisively, I would be dead,” she said.