Freed academic Elizabeth Tsurkov reveals torture by Kataib Hezbollah

Russian-Israeli national was held for more than two years in Iraq

Elizabeth Tsurkov, pictured in 2017, said he was subject to torture by Kataib Hezbollah. AFP

An academic kidnapped and held in Iraq for almost two years says she was whipped, beaten and electrocuted in a prolonged campaign of torture by her Iran-backed militant captors.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli national studying in the US, was abducted in Baghdad in March 2023. She was freed in September, when President Donald Trump said she had been "tortured for many months" by the Kataib Hezbollah group.

Ms Tsurkov, 38, gave new details of her ordeal in an interview with the New York Times in which she described spending months in a windowless room, watched by two cameras. She revealed she sustained nerve damage and will require long-term physical and psychological treatment.

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In the first months after her capture "they whipped me all over", she said, and tortured her into false confessions about her links to Israel. She said her captors electrocuted her, hung her up from a ceiling and used her "as a punching bag".

In July 2023 she was moved to a different location where she was treated better, although still deprived of sunlight, she said. Her release two months ago came abruptly, when she was blindfolded, driven away and turned over to an Iraqi official.

Tsurkov arrives at a hospital in Israel in September after two years of captivity. Reuters

She is now recovering in Israel. After being released and transferred to the US embassy in Baghdad, she had a brief stop in Cyprus before being taken to hospital in Tel Aviv.

What persuaded Kataib Hezbollah to release her remains uncertain. Ms Tsurkov claimed she was told by Mark Savaya, a businessman recently appointed as US special envoy to Iraq, that the Trump administration had threatened to attack the group if it did not release her. Mr Savaya denied that.

The National previously reported that months of negotiations had taken place with Kataib Hezbollah.

Iraq's Prime Minister Mohammed Al Sudani cited "significant efforts exerted by our security agencies". Mr Trump's hostage envoy Adam Boehler, however, had criticised Iraq for making "false promises" to former President Joe Biden's administration about releasing her.

Iranian state media said two pro-Tehran militants were freed in a swap. One was said to be Imad Omehz, a Lebanese citizen abducted by Israeli army commandos in northern Lebanon last year.

Kataib Hezbollah, which was founded in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has frequently claimed attacks on Americans in the country. The US designated it as a terrorist organisation in 2009.

The group fought alongside other Shiite militias against mostly Sunni rebels during Syria's civil war and has continued to operate in Syria since. It has thousands of fighters and an arsenal of drones, rockets and short-range ballistic missiles, Iraqi officials and members of the group say.