After more than two years in the hands of her captors, Princeton doctoral student Elizabeth Tsurkov is finally free. The Israeli-Russian academic, seized in Baghdad by Iran-backed militia Kata'ib Hezbollah in 2023, has been released and is now in US custody.
Her ordeal, defined by academic ambition colliding with political danger, became an international drama that consumed governments, rattled diplomats and left her family in anguish.
