Former Kata'ib Hezbollah hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov described severe torture and sexual abuse during her captivity in Iraq in a BBC Newshour interview this week.Kidnapped in 2022 and held until September 2025, Tsurkov spent over 900 days in captivity.The Russian-born researcher initially entered Iraq as a doctoral student at Princeton, with the goal of conducting research for her dissertation. She entered the country in January; members of Kata'ib Hezbollah, a section of the Iraqi Popular