US should use its influence to help win the freedom of a scholar missing in Iraq, her sister says

WASHINGTON – The United States should use its influence to help win the freedom of a Russian-Israeli academic at Princeton University who went missing in Iraq just about six months in the past and is assumed to be held through an Iran-backed military appeared through Washington as a terrorist team, her sister mentioned Wednesday.

“The current level of pressure is unsatisfactory. It’s just not enough,” Emma Tsurkov mentioned in an interview with The Associated Press. “My sister is languishing at the hands of this terror organization. And it’s been almost six months.”

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a 36-year-old doctoral pupil whose paintings makes a speciality of the Middle East and in particular Syria, disappeared in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, in March whilst doing analysis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administrative center has mentioned she is being held through the Shiite team Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades, whose leader and founder died in the American airstrike in January 2020 that still killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of Tehran’s regional army alliances. The Hezbollah team has shut ties to the Iraqi executive.

Emma Tsurkov is operating to draw consideration to her sister’s destiny, assembly in Washington this week with the State Department and Israeli and Russian executive officers. She had was hoping to have a separate assembly at the Iraqi Embassy however mentioned officers there “blew me off.” The embassy didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

“I really never wanted to do any of this. But I realized that everyone is interested but no one is going to do anything to actually bring her home,” mentioned Emma Tsurkov, 35, a sociology analysis at Stanford University. “And everyone is just hoping that someone else does, passing the buck. But at the end of the day, I don’t see anything being done to bring my sister back.”

Elizabeth Tsurkov isn’t a U.S. citizen, restricting the equipment at the American executive’s disposal and the direct talent of Washington officers to safe her free up. But Emma Tsurkov contends that the U.S. executive nonetheless has considerable influence for the reason that her sister has important U.S. ties as a “graduate student in an American institution that is approved and funded for research.”

She said she made the case to a State Department official during a meeting on Tuesday that the U.S. government’s massive financial support to Iraq gives it leverage it should use. Washington gives significant military aid to Iraq as part of a shared interest in ensuring the country’s security, confronting the Islamic State group and preventing Iran from gaining more influence in the country.

Central to the anti-IS efforts are the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group for a number of Iran-backed militias, including Kataeb Hezbollah, the group believed to have kidnapped Tsurkov.

A State Department spokesman had no immediate response to the Tsurkov case when asked about it at a briefing Wednesday.

Emma Tsurkov is also set to meet this week with officials at Princeton, which she says has not been vocal enough in its support of her sister.

In a statement, Princeton spokesman Michael Hotchkiss said the university was “deeply concerned” about Elizabeth Tsurkov’s well-being and referred to as her a “valued member of the University community.” He mentioned that once finding out of her disappearance, the faculty instantly communicated with U.S. and Israeli executive officers.

“Elizabeth’s family subsequently asked that the University not involve government officials in the interest of keeping the matter private,” he said. “Once the situation became public, the University has and continues to communicate with relevant government officials and experts to understand how we can best support Elizabeth’s safe return to her family and her studies at Princeton.”

The sisters, daughters of dissidents, were born a year apart in the former Soviet Union and moved with their family as young girls to Israel. They are so closely connected that they texted daily while Elizabeth Tsurkov was in Baghdad.

Emma Tsurkov said she knew something was amiss because her sister would always quickly respond to text message photographs of her son, Elizabeth Tsurkov’s only nephew.

“She didn’t respond. And I get worried after a few hours, but then when it reached 12 hours,” she said.

Elizabeth Tsurkov’s last post on Twitter, now known as X, was on March 21, 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 and did not return. Days earlier, Elizabeth Tsurkov had had spinal cord surgery in Iraq.

Now, she said, the sisters are facing the prospect of being apart during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year and a holiday the family always commemorated together.

“This is,” she said, “the type of nightmare I wish on no one.”

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this document.