In this Sept., 2018 selfie image provided by Emma Tsurkov, right, she and Elizabeth Tsurkov are shown in Santa Clara Valley, Calif. Emma Tsurkov, the sister of Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli academic at Princeton University who went missing in Iraq nearly six months ago, says the U.S. government and other nations must do more to work to bring her home.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has said she is being held by the Shiite group Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades, whosein January 2020 that also killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of Tehran's regional military alliances. The Hezbollah group has close ties to the Iraqi government.
Elizabeth Tsurkov is not a U.S. citizen, limiting the tools at the American government's disposal and the direct ability of Washington officials to secure her release. But Emma Tsurkov contends that the U.S. government still has substantial influence given that her sister has significant U.S. ties as a “graduate student in an American institution that is approved and funded for research."
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. 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.
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