More details about the abduction of Israeli-Russian citizen Elizabeth Tsurkov were revealed in various reports following the announcement about the case by the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday.

Tsurkov, a native Arabic speaker, was abducted at “the beginning of Ramadan” at the end of March after leaving a cafe in Baghdad, an Iraqi intelligence source told AFP. She arrived in the country at the beginning of December 2022 and was carrying out research on pro-Iran factions and on Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr.

She had undergone emergency back surgery in Baghdad and was recovering at the time she was abducted, The New York Times reported.

The report added that Tsurkov has visited Iraq more than 10 times, according to Iraqi officials. Israeli officials said that she also visited several other enemy countries.

A senior Israeli official said on Wednesday evening that Tsurkov was abducted due to her Israeli identity. “She did something wrong, an Israeli citizen traveling to an enemy country,” the official said. “Despite this, she’s a citizen who’s in need. This is our view and therefore we’re doing our best.”

Israeli officials became aware of Tsurkov’s abduction several days after it occurred but kept it under wraps until reports began spreading on foreign media. “Managing such an incident with public exposure is much more difficult in every aspect,” a government source told Ynet.

According to the NYT report, Tsurkov’s abduction by Kataib Hezbollah, which is closely tied with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, raises fears she could be transferred to Iran but fortunately, there have been no signs that has happened.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the founder of the Kataeb Hezbollah group, which was added to the US government’s list of terrorist organizations in 2009, was killed in the same US airstrike in 2020 that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force.

According to a report by the Associated Press, Tsurkov is a fellow at the Washington-based think tank New Lines Institute. 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 AP 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.”

Hassan said they have reached out to American and foreign officials, including at Princeton University where Tsurkov is pursuing her doctorate, 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 U.S. State Department said in a statement on Wednesday: “We are aware of this kidnapping and condemn the abduction of private citizens. We defer to Iraqi authorities for comment.”

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.

Kataib Hezbollah, which is a separate organization from the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, has repeatedly attacked US Army posts in Iraq and Syria for 20 years. Days before its founder 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.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)