The kidnapped Israeli researcher in Iraq: In Syria, I worked to establish relations between Israel and SDF

ARK News… In her first appearance since her kidnapping in Iraq early last March, media outlets affiliated with armed groups published a video clip of Russian-Israeli Elizabeth Tsurkov, in which she said that she works for the Israeli Mossad and American intelligence in Iraq and Syria.

Tsrkov said in the clip recorded in Hebrew: “I worked for the Mossad and the American Central Intelligence. In Syria, I worked to establish relations between Israel and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in northeastern Syria. I visited it in 2022 in my capacity as an affiliate of the Mossad and the American Central Intelligence.”

She added that she worked in Iraq on the issue of "stirring up differences by organizing demonstrations in order to provoke a Shiite-Shiite conflict inside Iraq."

Tsurkov called on "the families of the Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip to take action against the Netanyahu government to stop the war that will lead to the death of their detained children," noting that "she served the State of Israel, but the Israeli government has not moved to rescue her since her arrest for more than 7 months."

Commenting on the video, the British newspaper The Guardian said, “The authenticity of the video, when and where it was filmed, and whether Tsurkov was forced to make these statements has not been verified, but Tsurkov pointed out that the Israeli prisoners were being held in Gaza, which means that the video was filmed later.” Last October 7, when Hamas began its attack.

Elizabeth Tsurkov traveled to Iraq as part of research she is conducting to prepare her doctoral thesis at Princeton University in the United States. In Baghdad, she “focused her research on factions loyal to Iran and on the Sadrist movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr,” according to several journalists who met her.

In early July, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that “Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Israeli-Russian citizen who disappeared a few months ago in Iraq, is being held by the Shiite Kataib Hezbollah militia,” but this militia denied the validity of the Israeli accusation and its connection to the kidnapping.

The Iraqi authorities announced in July that they had opened an investigation into the kidnapping of an Israeli-Russian researcher in Iraq, but they have not announced any results yet.

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