SPECIAL EPISODE: The Elizabeth Tsurkov interview
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An Israeli-Russian woman held for two and half years by militants in Iraq has told the BBC how she was trussed and hung from the ceiling, whipped, sexually abused and electrocuted. Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was freed in September, suffered extreme abuse for over 100 days, leaving her physically and mentally scarred. Elizabeth believes she was held by members of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful Iran-back militias in Iraq, designated a terrorist organisation by the US and others. In this special edition of the Newshour podcast she speaks to Tim Franks about her ordeal and how she is determined to continue her work on the region. This interview contains some graphic testimony that listeners could find distressing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.7 | Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Newsare podcast with me, Tim Franks. |
| 0:12.5 | It's special because it's devoted to a single conversation I had with a remarkable guest. |
| 0:18.7 | She's Elizabeth Zerkovov, an Israeli Russian woman, |
| 0:22.2 | who was held captive for two and a half years by militants in Iraq. |
| 0:26.2 | She was released in September, and is currently recuperating in central Israel. |
| 0:31.3 | You'll get a sense of her ordeal of some of the abuse, the torture she suffered |
| 0:35.9 | during the course of this interview, and the usual warning that you might find some of the abuse, the torture she suffered during the course of this interview, and the usual |
| 0:39.3 | warning that you might find some of those details distressing. But this 39-year-old doctoral student |
| 0:45.8 | from Princeton University in the US who was conducting fieldwork in Baghdad when she was kidnapped |
| 0:51.2 | back in March 23, she also has some really interesting things to say about Iraq and about the region. |
| 0:59.2 | My first question to her, though, given all that she has gone through, how is she? |
| 1:04.0 | Health-wise, yeah, I'm suffering from a slew of problems due to the torture. |
| 1:10.8 | And the torture occurred at the start of |
| 1:15.6 | my captivity, which lasted, you know, for 903 days. So after particularly the tortures herniated |
| 1:24.2 | my back, I became quite immobile, and that also contributed to the muscle |
| 1:29.2 | atrophy. And I have nerve damage on top of that. So my health is not great, quite restricted in what I |
| 1:37.0 | can do. But mentally, I'm quite well. I was in solitary this whole time, but after four and a half months, I was moved |
| 1:50.4 | from a facility where I was severely tortured to a facility where I was fed enough and I was treated |
| 1:58.6 | well, with the exception of being in solitary and not seeing the sun this whole time and not having a window. |
| 2:05.3 | So therefore, even in captivity, I had time to recover, even if not fully, mentally, emotionally, from the really horrible period of the torture. |
| 2:21.1 | Can I ask you, and I realize this comes loaded with all sorts of potential problems, |
... |
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