Freed Israeli hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov recounts being beaten, tortured, electrocuted and sexually assaulted during the two and a half years she was held hostage by an Iran backed group in Iraq.
By Rachel Avraham
In an interview with the New York Times, freed Israeli hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov said she was beaten, tortured, electrocuted, and sexually assaulted during the two and a half years she was held by the Kataib Hezbollah terrorist group in Iraq, the Times of Israel revealed. The Kataib Hezbollah terror group is tied to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Elizabeth Tsukov, an Israeli-Russian citizen who was studying for her doctorate at Princeton University, told the New York Times that her captors “basically used me as a punching bag,” particularly during the first months after her kidnapping.
Tsurkov also revealed that she was kidnapped after setting up a meeting with an Iraqi woman in Baghdad, Haaretz noted. According to the report, the woman, who told Tsurkov she wanted assistance in research on the Islamic State, never showed up to the meeting.
As Tsurkov was leaving, she was kidnapped by several men, Haaretz stressed. According to the report, in response to her cries for help, the kidnapper sexually and physically assaulted her. “They started twisting my pinkie, almost breaking it. So I thought resisting more was pointless,” she told the New York Times. According to Haaretz, she was held in a windowless room, by herself, for four months.
One of her captors, referred to by others as “the colonel,” was “very filthy and very obsessed with sex,” she said, adding that he threatened her with rape and grabbed a tattoo on her thigh, the Times of Israel reported. According to the report, she recalled one of her worst days, in July 2023, when she was interrogated about her mandatory military service, in which she served in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate some 20 years ago. Originally, she lied about her IDF service, but in the end confessed under torture. She told the New York Times that at times she invented believable stories just to get the torture to stop.
Roughly a month after Israel publicly acknowledged that Tsurkov had been kidnapped, she was moved to a new location, Haaretz noted. While she was no longer being tortured and she received written materials and access to both a bathroom and a kitchen, Tsurkov said she was held there for over two years, by herself and without even a window, Haaretz reported. “I never saw the sun,” she recounted.
In the first proof that she was alive, Tsurkov appeared on Iraqi TV in November 2023 and was instructed to say that she worked as an Israeli and US spy, the Times of Israel reported. According to the report, she used “coded messages,” such as falsely claiming to live in the Gan Hashmal neighborhood in Tel Aviv, to convey that she had been tortured. The Times of Israel reported that she also invented fake names for her supposed handlers, including “Ethan Nuima,” a name sounding like the Hebrew word for torture, inuyim. Although that did not make it into the broadcast, Kataeb Hezbollah spokesman referenced the name in a Telegram statement detailing Tsurkov’s false confessions in a statement after her release — a claim that she said proved the group had imprisoned her, the Times of Israel noted.
Tsukov told the Times of Israel that “I genuinely believe I would have died” if Trump administration officials had not “engaged so consistently and with such incredible determination” to demand her release. According to the Times of Israel. she said that she is missing a tooth due to her beatings and spends much of her days since gaining freedom lying on her back because her injuries make sitting or standing too painful.
Photo from i24NEWS Français: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqhPS2Aezo
