Imad Amhaz, kidnapped in Batroun by the Israeli elite force Shayetet 13. Photo circulating on social media.
Russian Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, kidnapped in Baghdad in 2023 and released Tuesday, was reportedly freed in exchange for two prisoners affiliated with the “resistance,” including Lebanese national Imad Amhaz, according to Iraqi sources cited by the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
Tsurkov was expected to arrive in Israel on Wednesday and be taken directly to a hospital, following the same protocol used for hostages freed from Gaza.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump first announced her release on Truth Social, later confirmed by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani. Trump said Tsurkov had been held by the Iraqi Kataeb Hezbollah and “tortured for many months.”
Amhaz, a Lebanese merchant ship captain, was abducted in November 2024 by an Israeli commando in Batroun, north of Beirut. The Israeli army claimed he was a senior figure in Hezbollah’s naval unit, though the group has never confirmed this.
Amhaz was reportedly held at Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank, according to a March 14 report in the pro-Hezbollah daily al-Akhbar.
Regional outlets, including Lebanon’s al-Jadeed TV, reported that Tsurkov’s release came as part of a prisoner swap involving Amhaz and other Hezbollah members detained by Israel. Neither Hezbollah nor Amhaz’s family confirmed the deal. The identity of the second prisoner freed in the exchange remains unknown.
Speculation about prisoner exchange deals had circulated since January, when media reports claimed Iraq, Hezbollah and Israel were negotiating a swap involving Amhaz and six Hezbollah fighters captured in southern Lebanon during recent clashes.
On Tuesday, Tsurkov was handed over to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, she had traveled frequently to Iraq for research on pro-Iranian factions. She disappeared in March 2023 after leaving a Baghdad cafe.
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