ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov on Friday issued her first public statement since her release in early September, thanking everyone who played a role in her release, and decrying her time “in the depths of hell” while held captive by an Iraqi armed faction.

In March 2023, Tsurkov, a PhD candidate at Princeton University who had supposedly entered Iraq for research purposes using her Russian passport, was kidnapped by Iraq’s Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah, accusing her of being an Israeli intelligence (Mossad) agent.

On September 9, after two years in captivity, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani announced that the researcher had been released. In a later statement, US President Donald Trump confirmed Tsurkov’s release, directly naming Kataib Hezbollah as her captors.

“Thank you to all those who worked to secure my release throughout the years of my captivity [and] all my friends around the world who pleaded for my freedom and prayed for me,” the researcher wrote in an Arabic message on X.

“The All-Hearing, the Most Merciful, preserved me even in the depths of hell under the torture of the scum brigades, and saved me from the hands of these wicked people,” Tsurkov added, employing a play on words to refer to her captors, the Kataib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades).

Tsurkov also published two other messages: One in English and one in Hebrew. In the English post, Tsurkov thanked Trump for “the decisive action that brought me home without anything to the given in return to the kidnappers.”

Following her release, Abu Ali al-Askari, a Kataib Hezbollah official, claimed that Tsurkov’s release was carried out by the Iraqi government by Sudani’s directive, to avoid a “potential strike” and to compel the US-led international coalition to fulfill the agreement of their military withdrawal.

The official further accused Tsurkov of being an “Israeli spy” who entered Iraq to “incite Shiite infighting” during the 2019 popular Tishreen protest movement.

In November 2023, media affiliated with Iraq’s Iran-backed armed factions released a video of Tsurkov in custody, where she admits to have been employed by Mossad and the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to aggravate intra-Shiite conflicts in Iraq through devising the student-led protests of 2019.

A senior Israeli official in July denied the allegations that Tsurkov was a Mossad agent, claiming that she is “an innocent Israeli citizen doing doctoral work.”

The Kataib Hezbollah, a group under Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), has been designated a terrorist organization by the US. Numerous factions within the PMF have routinely been accused of acting with impunity and maintaining strong ties to Iran despite the group’s integration into the Iraqi armed forces.

Iraq maintains a hardline stance against Israel. The country’s Law of Criminalizing the Normalization with the Zionist Entity prohibits officials and media personnel from engaging with Israel in any capacity, making it punishable by death.