For the first time since her release from captivity, Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov is revealing the harrowing ordeal of abuse she suffered over the past two and a half years.
Tsurkov was taken hostage in March 2023 by Kataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian Iraqi terrorist organization. In an interview with the BBC, she described how her captors discovered she was Israeli, after which she was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture.
“During the first month, they starved me and interrogated me, but at the time they didn't know about my Israeli citizenship. They're simply convinced that all foreigners are spies,” Tsurkov recounted.
She initially told her captors she was a Russian citizen, but after they examined her phone, "because I'm not a spy and don't have multiple encrypted devices, everything showed that I'm Israeli."
Immediately afterward, her captors began torturing her brutally. According to Tsurkov, the torture included electrocutions, beatings, whippings, sexual abuse and what she described as Middle Eastern "specialities".
"Being hung from the ceiling with hands cuffed behind my back. Being hung with the hands above my head. [There is] a particular method that is used in Iraq. It's called 'the scorpion'. You get handcuffed with [your] shoulders crossed behind the back. It often leads to dislocation of shoulders."
She said that throughout her captivity, she tried inventing various conspiracy theories to lessen the torture, even “confessing” to things she had not done in hopes of stopping the abuse. "They would torture me so I would give them these confessions that I would invent, and then they simply got greedy. So, they would return, hang me by my wrists and start beating me with a stick and using even harsher methods of torture and saying, 'I want something new.'"
After 100 days of severe abuse, Tsurkov was transferred to another hideout, where she said the torture stopped.
Ultimately, after two and a half years in captivity, she was released on September 9 this year following US pressure and with the assistance of Iraqi security services.