Activists working to free Binyamin ben Limor, an Israeli imprisoned in Iraq for more than a decade, say his case has reached a final stage and that he could be released and allowed to travel to Israel within days or weeks.
The assessment was reported by Yeshiva World News, which cited sources involved in the effort. Those working on the case describe the optimism as cautious, and say progress has come in the legal and diplomatic proceedings around his imprisonment rather than through any single decision. The public is being asked to continue reciting Tehillim on his behalf until the process is complete.
Binyamin is being held in a prison near the Iraq-Iran border. His case dates to 2014, when he traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan to visit elderly grandparents as ISIS was expanding its operations in the region. He joined local residents in defending the area against the group.
In 2015 he was involved in a confrontation with a taxi driver who identified him as a Hebrew speaker and threatened to hand him over to ISIS. The driver was injured in the struggle and later died. Binyamin was arrested, interrogated and eventually convicted. In 2020, a Kurdish court sentenced him to death by hanging.
The sentence was annulled in November 2025 after years of work by rabbis, activists and international legal experts. The breakthrough followed a sulha, a traditional reconciliation agreement, reached with the family of the man who died. Under the arrangement the family agreed to forgo the death penalty in return for financial compensation, and the required sum was raised through a fundraising campaign among Jewish communities abroad. A Kurdish judge then annulled the death sentence and the court substituted a shortened prison term.
As part of that process, Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Weiss of Antwerp traveled to the detention facility to meet Binyamin and complete the reconciliation according to local custom.
The immediate threat to his life has been removed, but he remains in custody while the remaining legal and bureaucratic steps are completed. The current effort is directed at securing his full release and arranging his departure from Iraq.
