WASHINGTON (AP) — A Princeton University doctoral student who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2023 while doing research there has been freed and turned over to U.S. authorities, her family and President Donald Trump said Tuesday.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, who holds Israeli and Russian citizenship, spent more than 900 days in custody after being kidnapped in March 2003 in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
In the past few months, officials from several countries, including the Iraqi foreign minister and deputy prime minister, have confirmed she was alive and being held in Iraq by a Shiite Muslim militant group called Kataeb Hezbollah, according to her sister. The group has not claimed the kidnapping nor have Iraqi officials publicly said which group is responsible.
“My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days,” said a statement from her sister Emma in which she thanked, among others, Adam Boehler, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
Emma Tsurkov said she lost contact with her sister in late March 2023, after Elizabeth went to meet sources in a coffee shop in Baghdad’s central neighborhood of Karradah. Elizabeth Tsurkov had back surgery eight days before her kidnapping for a slipped disc and was more vulnerable, her sister said. She was supposed to get her stitches removed two days after her kidnapping and faced a long road of physical therapy back in Princeton, New Jersey.
The only direct proof of life of Elizabeth Tsurkov during her captivity was a video broadcast in November 2023 on an Iraqi television station and circulated on pro-Iranian social media purporting to show her.
