Israeli abducted in Iraq said to have initiated contact with her kidnappers
Elizabeth Tsurkov may have interviewed her Iraqi abductors in Baghdad for her research, Arab sources claim
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Four months after the abduction of Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov in Iraq, new details emerged Sunday on the circumstances of her disappearance.
According to unnamed Arab sources quoted by Channel 12 news, Tsurkov initiated the meeting with her kidnappers as part of her doctoral research on Shiite movements in Iraq, focused on the movement of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr.
Tsurkov has been missing since late March. Footage released by an Iraqi TV channel supposedly showed the moments before her abduction, as she was leaving the Ridha Alwan cafe in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood, an area frequented by Westerners, in the company of a man.
Until now, it was not clear how the Shiite group accused of her abduction, the Kataeb Hezbollah militia — a distinct group from the Lebanese Hezbollah — had found out about the presence of an Israeli researcher in the country.
According to the report, it was Tsurkov herself who contacted a Shiite man named Ahmad Alawani, asking for a meeting with his cousin Muhammad Alawani, a senior official in Kataeb Hezbollah.
During their second meeting with Tsurkov, the two men discovered that she was Israeli, and decided to kidnap her, according to the report. Following her abduction, attempts were apparently made to transfer her to Iran.
Tsurkov, a 36-year old Middle East analyst and a doctoral student at Princeton University, was said to have entered Iraq late last year on her Russian passport. She has been missing since March.
She was reportedly given personal warnings by Israeli officials about traveling to Iraq, in the months leading up to her abduction, following repeated her stays in the country.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that it holds Iraq accountable for her safety and fate, and accused Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah of holding her, but the pro-Iran armed faction has implied it was not involved in her disappearance.
Kataeb Hezbollah is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, dozens of mostly Shiite militias that were integrated into Iraqi security forces in recent years.
Last week, Asharq Al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic daily, reported that the kidnapping was carried out to pressure Israel to release an imprisoned Iranian operative.
