Missing Princeton University grad student being held hostage by Iran-backed militia, Israel's prime minister says
(CBS/AP) -- A dual Israeli-Russian academic who has been missing in Iraq for months is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the office of Israel's prime minister said Wednesday.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton University doctoral student, who disappeared in Iraq in late March, is being held hostage by the Shiite group Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades, a powerful Iran-backed group that the U.S. government listed as a terrorist organization in 2009, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's office said Tsurkov is still alive "and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being."
The group's leader and founder Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in an American airstrike near Baghdad's international airport in January 2020 along with Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional military alliances.
Tsurkov, whose work focuses on the Middle East, and specifically war-torn Syria, is an expert on regional affairs and has been widely quoted over the years by international media.
While Netanyahu's office did not provide a date for her disappearance, Tsurkov, who was active on Twitter, last posted there on March 21.
She is a fellow at the Washington-based think tank New Lines Institute. Staff there said they'd last heard from Tsurkov on March 19. She told them she had enough of doing field research and wanted to return to the U.S. to finish her dissertation at Princeton, CBS News reported.
"We were relieved. We did not want her to stay in an Iraq that was increasingly dominated by pro-Iranian militias," New Lines Magazine wrote in a statement. "Just over a week later, we learned from our sources that a pro-Iranian militia had kidnapped her in Baghdad, where she had been doing research. We have not heard from her since."
Her colleague Hassan Hassan, editor-in-chief of New Lines Magazine, said co-workers were notified of her kidnapping in Iraq on March 29. Hassan told The Associated Press that some of her colleagues had been in touch with her just days before she went missing.
"We could not believe the news, knowing what Iraq is like for any scholar or researcher in recent years," he said. "But there is hope that she will be released through negotiations."
Staff at the magazine didn't say anything about Tsurkov's kidnapping when it first happened out of respect for her family's wishes and in the hope that her release would be resolved quickly, they said. New
Hassan said they have reached out to American and foreign officials, including at Princeton University, for assistance. He added that they "called on the United States government to be involved in securing her release, despite her not being a U.S. national."
The State Department has not said if the U.S. government will play any role in trying to obtain Tsurkov's release.
"We are aware of this kidnapping and condemn the abduction of private citizens," a State Department spokesperson said. "We defer to Iraqi authorities for comment."
Tsurkov's mother told news outlets in Israel that she'd thought her daughter was in Turkey and didn't know her daughter was in Iraq.
"She was kidnapped in the middle of Baghdad, and we see the Iraqi government as directly responsible for her safety," Tsurkov's family said in a statement to the The New York Times. "We ask for her immediate release from this unlawful detention."
Netanyahu said Tsurkov is an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, "at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University."
Tsurkov could not have used her Israeli passport to enter Iraq as the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
A senior official from Kataeb Hezbollah declined to comment on the matter.
Israel has a history of releasing prisoners as part of swap deals to obtain the release of captives, which Tsurkov has spoken out about in the past. In a 2021 tweet, Tsurkov said in Hebrew that she was generally against such deals "even if I get into trouble during my next visit to Syria/Iraq."
Princeton called Tsurkov a valued member of the university community.
"We are deeply concerned for her safety and wellbeing, and we are eager for her to be able to rejoin her family and resume her studies," Princeton said in a statement.
Tsurkov has over a decade of experience working with human rights organizations in the Middle East, according to colleagues. She is also a fellow at the American think tank the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Iran emerged as a major power broker in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, supporting Shiite groups and militias that have enjoyed wide influence in the country ever since.
There has been no official comment from Iraq since Tsurkov went missing. Days after her disappearance, a local website reported that an Iranian citizen who was involved in her kidnapping was detained by Iraqi authorities. It said the woman was kidnapped from Baghdad's central neighborhood of Karradah and that Iran's embassy in the Iraqi capital was pressing for the man's release and to have him deported to Iran.
Some Iraqi activists posted a copy of a passport of an Iranian man at the time, claiming that he was involved in the kidnapping.
Netanyahu's office said Tsurkov's case is being handled by the "relevant parties in the State of Israel out of concern for Elizabeth Tsurkov's security and well-being."
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy, citing the country's hostile rhetoric, support for militant groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and its suspected nuclear program. Iran denies Western allegations that it is pursuing a nuclear bomb.
Days before Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Soleimani were killed, U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Syria killed 25 Kataeb Hezbollah members. The U.S. said at the time that the December 2019 strike was a retaliation for a rocket attack days earlier that killed an American contractor at an Iraqi military base that it blamed on the group.
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Mroue and Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report from Boston.
