Overview
- Tsurkov says the Iran-aligned militia abducted her in Baghdad in March 2023 after she was lured to a meeting while conducting research on her Russian passport.
- She describes repeated beatings, sexual assault, electrocution, and being hung from the ceiling, alongside months of malnutrition.
- She reports roughly two years in a windowless solitary cell and lasting nerve damage that now requires long-term physical and psychological rehabilitation.
- She was forced to deliver televised confessions in late 2023, using coded references to signal torture, before being handed to Iraqi authorities in September and flown via Cyprus to Israel.
- Reporting credits U.S. intermediaries and Iraqi officials with facilitating her release, naming Adam Boehler and Mark Savaya, though some roles are unconfirmed and Kataib Hezbollah has not acknowledged kidnapping her.