‘Used as a punching bag’: Elizabeth Tsurkov breaks silence on torture in Iraqi captivity

Tsurkov has publicly thanked Trump and named U.S. officials who worked her case; she is an Israeli-Russian national and a Princeton doctoral student.

By Jewish Breaking News

Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov has given her first detailed account of what she endured in two and a half years of captivity in Iraq, describing beatings, electric shocks, and sexual assault by the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terror group.

In a New York Times interview summarized by Israeli outlets, she says her captors “basically used me as a punching bag,” and credits sustained pressure from President Trump’s team for saving her life.

Tsurkov recounts being lured to a Baghdad café by a false research contact, then forced into an SUV where the assault began.

She initially hid her Israeli identity, but interrogators eventually found proof on her phone, escalated the abuse, and strung her up until she issued fabricated confessions to stop the torture—losing a tooth from repeated blows.

Even under duress, she tried to signal the truth. On an Iraqi TV “proof-of-life” clip, she embedded coded hints—claiming to live in “Gan Hashmal” (a nod to inuyim, Hebrew for “torture”) and inventing a handler named “Ethan Nuima.”

Later, she was moved to what she and Israeli officials believe was a Kataib Hezbollah site near the Iranian border, where she felt explosions she thought were Israeli strikes during last summer’s fighting with Iran.

Despite access to food, books and an Arabic thesaurus there, the pain from earlier torture never abated.

Her freedom followed an intensive diplomatic drive centered in Washington and Baghdad. Reuters previously reported that Hostage Envoy Adam Boehler pressed the case in person with Iraq’s leadership.

When she was released, Trump announced she was safely at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and Iraqi officials publicly took credit for the handover.

The Associated Press and The Guardian confirmed her release after more than 900 days in captivity.

Tsurkov has publicly thanked Trump and named U.S. officials who worked her case; she is an Israeli-Russian national and a Princeton doctoral student.

Kataib Hezbollah—an Iranian proxy long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.—has not formally admitted to abducting her, even as its messaging echoed names she invented under torture.

Her testimony adds specificity to what Israelis know too well: Iran’s regional militias use hostage-taking and sexual violence as weapons while denying culpability.

She is now rehabilitating at Sheba Medical Center, where images captured her reunion with family, and says she is still largely confined to lying on her back from the injuries.