Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was freed in September, says she suffered extreme abuse for 100 days, leaving her physically and mentally scarred. The interview she gave to BBC Newshour was conducted in central Israel, propped up on a bed. It is now almost three months after her release from captivity in Iraq, where she was held for 903 days. The first four and a half months had been particularly brutal: she was, she says, trussed and hung from the ceiling, whipped, sexually abused, electrocuted.

In March 2023, Ms Tsurkov, a 39-year-old doctoral student at Princeton University in the US, was living in Baghdad, conducting fieldwork for her PhD in comparative politics. She agreed to meet a woman who described herself as a friend of a friend. The woman never showed up. Ms Tsurkov started walking home. She says that a car pulled up behind her and two men dragged her in, beating and sexually assaulting her. She was driven to the outskirts of the capital.

"During the first month, they starved me and interrogated me, but at the time they didn't know about my Israeli citizenship. They're simply convinced that all foreigners are spies."

Ms Tsurkov had insisted that she was a Russian citizen. But then the kidnappers accessed her phone, and "because I'm not a spy and don't have multiple encrypted devices, everything showed that I'm Israeli". She says that was when the torture started: electrocutions, beatings, whippings, sexual abuse and what she calls Middle Eastern "specialities". "Being hung from the ceiling with hands cuffed behind my back. Being hung with the hands above my head." And "a particular method that is used in Iraq. It's called 'the scorpion'. You get handcuffed with [your] shoulders crossed behind the back. It often leads to dislocation of shoulders." (BBC)