A campaign titled “Zachreinu L’Chaim” has been launched to raise the urgent sum of $250,000 to save a young Jew, Binyamin Chasin, who sits in an Iraqi prison under a looming death sentence.

Binyamin Chasin was born in Iraqi Kurdistan and immigrated as a child first to Eretz Yisroel and later to Canada, before returning to Eretz Yisroel as a teenager.

In 2014, at the age of 21, he traveled to visit his elderly grandparents in Kurdistan. It was the very time that the dreaded ISIS terror group was sweeping through Iraq. Witnessing the danger, Binyamin joined local Kurds in defending their towns from ISIS atrocities.

Tragically, while returning home one day in 2015, he was accosted by a taxi driver who overheard him speaking Hebrew. The driver threatened to hand him to ISIS. In the struggle that followed, Binyamin drew his weapon and shot the driver in the leg. The driver later died, leading to Binyamin’s arrest and severe torture at the hands of local authorities.

In August 2020, a Kurdish court sentenced Binyamin to death by hanging. Through extraordinary effort, askanim managed to transfer him out of Sulaymaniyah, a prison under heavy Iranian influence, to a facility in Erbil, sparing him from immediate execution.

However, the death sentence remains in force, and only a sulcha — a reconciliation settlement with the victim’s family — can annul it. After years of negotiations, the family’s demand has been lowered to $250,000, and they have agreed in writing that upon receipt of the funds, Binyamin will be released.

Renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz has been involved in the case, lending his influence and confirming the dire danger in which Binyamin remains. Rabbi Avraham (Alan) Lowy, an askan with years of pidyon shvuyim work, has personally traveled to Iraq multiple times to meet Binyamin, finding him physically broken, trembling, and spitting blood as a result of his sufferings.

Rabbi Lowy stressed the urgency: “The verdict is signed and sealed. They can carry out the execution any day. If we had the funds in hand, we could save him within days.”

In recent days, letters supporting the effort have been issued by HaRav Chaim Dovid Weiss shlit”a, Satmar Dayan of Antwerp, and the Dzikov-Melitzer Rebbe shlit”a, both of whom for years have been moser nefesh for pidyon shvuyim.

The Satmar Dayan has personally pledged to oversee all donations, ensuring that not a single dollar will be transferred until the Yid is safely released. A trusted emissary of the Dayan, well-known for his work in countless pidyon shvuyim cases, will deliver the funds directly.

Donations are being collected under strict rabbinic oversight through the Zachreinu L’Chaim campaign.

Yidden worldwide are also asked to daven for Binyamin ben Limor, that he should be zocheh to a yeshua me’afeilah l’orah in the very near future.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)