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Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli researcher with Russian citizenship, was kidnapped on March 21, 2023, in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, while she was in the country to finish her doctoral dissertation research at Princeton University. According to multiple reports, Tsurkov was born in Russia but immigrated to Israel at a young age.
Israeli officials confirmed in a statement that Tsurkov, a 36-year-old doctoral student at Princeton University who has been missing for months, was kidnapped by Kataib Hezbollah while searching for Iranian-backed factions. The research focused on the movement of Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
Kataib Hezbollah, part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, was formed to fight the Islamic State group. The group is an extremist Shiite paramilitary faction backed by Iran. The United States designated the group a terrorist organization in 2009.
Three months after Elizabeth Tsurkov was kidnapped, on Wednesday 5 July, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the missing Israeli researcher is alive, stating that Iraq is now responsible for Tsurkov’s safety.
Explore the details of Elizabeth Tsurkov’s kidnapping
Elizabeth Tsurkov, who holds dual Russian-Israeli citizenship, reportedly entered Iraq on her Russian passport, as she has done several times in the past, in December 2022. According to her website, Tsurkov, as part of her doctoral dissertation at Princeton University, which previously conducted work Field work in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and other countries in the Middle East.
According to The New York Times, Tsurkov was leaving the Reza Alwan Café in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad on March 21, 2021, when it was taken over by Kataib Hezbollah.
The Times of Israel quoted an Israeli official as saying the researcher was kidnapped because of her ties to Russia and Israel. The official said the extremist group suspected Tsurkov of being a spy for the Mossad (Israeli intelligence).
The suspicion was based on the researcher’s military service in the Israel Defense Forces. However, the service is supposedly compulsory for all Israeli citizens who are not Israeli soldiers residing in the country. The Israeli official strongly denied the spying allegations and said:
“She’s not a Mossad member at all, exclamation mark, underscore.”
Officials said Tsurkov and the Israeli government are in contact with her family. However, Tsurkov’s mother, Irina, told Israeli public television station Kan that she had not heard from Israeli officials and had not spoken to her daughter in months.
“I’m worried about her. I exchanged letters with her two months ago.”
Meanwhile, Emma Tsurkov, Elisabeth’s younger sister, told the Israeli news site Ynet that she last spoke with her PhD candidate in March. She said:
“We were trying to figure out what was going on. I knew she was there because she was researching. We talked a lot about her research and how she would write her Ph.D. I knew she was doing the fieldwork there.”
Emma said her sister was studying the political movement in Iraq from the perspective of ordinary people.
“I interview people to understand how they see the world, and that’s what my PhD is about.”
Elizabeth Tsurkov is the second Princeton PhD candidate to be kidnapped in a Middle Eastern country
Elizabeth Tsurkov is the second Princeton PhD student to be taken hostage in a Middle Eastern country. In 2016, Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born US citizen, was accused of espionage and imprisoned in Iran.
Wang was released in 2019 as part of a prisoner exchange deal with Massoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist who was arrested for violating US trade sanctions in 2018.
In the wake of Tsurkov’s kidnapping, Wang criticized Princeton for continuing to endanger the lives of its students by allowing them to conduct research in war-torn countries. Wang, in a statement to Al-Monitor, accused the university of discouraging him from contacting the authorities after his arrest in Iran. He said:
“My passport was confiscated 18 days before my arrest, and the university decided not to make it public, and to discourage my family and my family from informing the authorities of what is happening.”
While Israeli authorities work for Elizabeth Tsurkov’s release, Princeton said in a statement Wednesday that it was concerned for the safety of its students.
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