Emma, the sister of Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian citizen reportedly held by the Shiite "Hezbollah" brigades in Iraq, clarified that her sister’s trip to Baghdad was purely academic. Elizabeth is a graduate student at Princeton University. In a statement to CNN, Emma mentioned that her sister was in the comparative politics department, working on a thesis regarding sectarianism within political movements in the Middle East. Emma added that as part of her research, Elizabeth was conducting fieldwork to understand the daily lives of Iraqis and their perspectives on the surrounding political structures.
Emma noted that her sister was speaking with people in Baghdad and conducting interviews with participants in her study, emphasizing that Elizabeth was about to complete her work and was expected to return to the United States and Princeton within two months to begin writing her final research.
Emma recounted, "The last time I spoke with her was the day before her kidnapping, on March 20 of this year. It was a completely normal routine conversation. We talked about the interviews she had just conducted, and some interviews were still pending, and how she would conclude her fieldwork and return to Princeton. It was totally routine conversations, and there were no warning signs. She was not worried and had not faced any threats. In fact, on the contrary, during her fieldwork in the Middle East, she repeatedly said that people were very welcoming and open."
