International

FILE – In this Sept., 2018 selfie image provided by Emma Tsurkov, right, she and Elizabeth Tsurkov are shown in Santa Clara Valley, Calif.

AP Photo/Eric Tucker, file

Israeli-Russian graduate student kidnapped in Iraq has been released, Trump and family say

By The Canadian Press

Published 2:30 PDT, Tue September 9, 2025

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A Princeton University graduate 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 disappearing in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, as she was pursuing a doctorate focused on sectarianism in the region.

She was turned over to the American Embassy in Baghdad after having been “tortured for many months,” Trump said in a social media post in which he identified her captors as from Kata’ib Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim militant group. The group has not claimed the kidnapping.

“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, who lives in California and has campaigned for her release. She thanked among others Adam Boehler, the U.S. government's special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

Two Iraqi militia officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case said Tsurkov’s release came about as a result of negotiations and not through a military operation to free her.

The officials said that one of the conditions for her release had been the withdrawal of U.S. forces currently stationed in Iraq — which had been agreed upon between Washington and Baghdad last year — and that the U.S. and Israel would not launch strikes on Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani said in a post on X that Tsurkov’s release was the “culmination of extensive efforts exerted by our security services over the course of many months”

“We reaffirm, once again, that we will not tolerate any compromise in enforcing the law and upholding the authority of the state, nor will we allow anyone to undermine the reputation of Iraq and its people,” he said.

Al-Sudani came to power in 2022 with the backing of a coalition of Iran-linked Shiite parties, but since then has sought to balance relations between Washington and Tehran. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, he said he sought closer ties with the Trump administration.

An expert on regional affairs widely quoted over the years by international media, Elizabeth Tsurkov made her last post on Twitter, now known as X, on March 21, 2023, when she recirculated a photograph of pro-Kurdistan protesters in Syria. Emma Tsurkov said it was her understanding that her sister went to a coffee shop in Baghdad’s central neighborhood of Karradah, days after having spinal cord surgery, and did not return.

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. But officials from multiple countries have confirmed in recent months that she was alive.

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Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

– Eric Tucker, The Associated Press