About the horrors he experienced while he was a hostage in Iraq for two and a half years, he spoke to a 38-year-old Israeli woman. Elizabeth Churkov recounted the torture and sexual abuse against her, as she says members of the Qataib Hezbollah considered her a spy.

Members of the Iranian-backed militia, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, “were basically using me as a punching bag,” Elizabeth told the New York Times. “I was whipped everywhere,” she said. She was hung from the ceiling, beaten until she passed out, and given electric shocks.

Elizabeth, a doctoral student at Princeton University in New Jersey, was kidnapped on March 21, 2023, after a woman who had asked her to meet at a Baghdad cafe to help her with her ISIS research never showed up.

The student was in Iraq to study the Shia movement and agreed to meet the woman after she was told they had a mutual friend. However, the meeting never took place as the woman never showed up. Elizabeth was returning home and was then abducted by men riding in a black SUV, according to the Daily Mail.

Although she desperately screamed for help and tried to escape, her captors beat and sexually assaulted her. “They started twisting my little finger, almost breaking it. So I thought it was pointless to resist any more,” she said.

The kidnappers had put a bag over Elizabeth’s head and tied her hands. They led her to a room in a house that had no windows, only two cameras, and she was there for the next four and a half months.

When they realized she was from Israel, members of Qataib Hezbollah believed she was a spy. She claimed she had nothing to do with it, insisting that she supported Palestinian rights and was critical of the Israeli government. She refused to confess that she was a spy and, as a result, was “hanged and tortured.”

He said he began making up confessions to allow his captors to allow him to eat and rest. Then a man known as “the Colonel” sexually harassed her and threatened to rape her. “He was very dirty and obsessed with sex,” according to Elizabeth. The threats of sexual abuse continued, according to the 38-year-old, but she was not assaulted.

The coded messages in the video and the release

It took several months for the Israeli government to recognize her as a hostage and a few more months for the Iraqi government to prove she was alive. In a video shown on Iraqi television in November 2023, members of Qataib Hezbollah had forced, as it says, Elizabeth to say she was working for the CIA and Israeli intelligence. However, she used coded messages to reveal what she was experiencing. To show that she was electrocuted, she said she lived in the Gan HaHashmal neighborhood. “Hashmal” is the Hebrew word for electricity.

At the same time, she made up names for her alleged instructors, saying she was working with a man named “Ethan Numia.” “Inuim” is the Hebrew word for torture.

He was eventually released in early September, without warning. She was taken to a garage in Baghdad, and an Iraqi official approached her and told her she was safe. She was then taken to a house and received medical attention.

Israel had reportedly asked the US to help free Elizabeth. Adam Boller, an American hostage release envoy known for his work with hostages in Gaza, campaigned for her release. And Mark Savaya, a businessman and friend of Donald Trump, is also said to have played a role in her release. “I honestly believe I would have died if they hadn’t been involved,” Churkov said.

A White House spokesman would not confirm Savaya’s role in Elizabeth’s release, but told the New York Times that Trump is “always concerned about Americans detained overseas” and that he was “willing to use our country’s strength and negotiating skills to intervene in this case.”

After her release, a spokesman for Qataib Hezbollah did not admit to kidnapping Elizabeth, but claimed in a Telegram statement that she had made several “confessions” that she was a spy and identified the fake “Ethan Nuima” as her trainer.