The United States should use its influence to help win the freedom of a Russian-Israeli academic at Princeton University who went missing in Iraq nearly six months ago and is believed to be held by an Iran-backed group, her sister said Wednesday.
“The current level of pressure is unsatisfactory. It’s just not enough,” Emma Tsurkov said in an interview with The Associated Press. “My sister is languishing at the hands of this terror organization. And it’s been almost six months.”
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a 36-year-old doctoral student whose work focuses on the Middle East and specifically Syria and Iraq, disappeared in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, in March while doing research.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has said she is being held by Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades.
Emma Tsurkov is working to draw attention to her sister's fate, meeting in Washington this week with the State Department and Israeli and Russian government officials.
“I really never wanted to do any of this. But I realized that everyone is interested but no one is going to do anything to actually bring her home,” said Emma Tsurkov, 35, a sociology researcher at Stanford University. “And everyone is just hoping that someone else does, passing the buck. But at the end of the day, I don’t see anything being done to bring my sister back.”
Elizabeth Tsurkov is not a US 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 US government still has substantial influence given that her sister has significant US ties as a “graduate student in an American institution that is approved and funded for research."
She said she made the case to a State Department official during a meeting on Monday that the US government's massive financial support to Iraq gives it leverage it should use.
She 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.
