Australian detained in Iraq for years on his way home
Engineer Robert Pether was jailed on fraud charges in 2021 though the UN said his detention was illegal.
Australian engineer Robert Pether has departed Iraq, five years after his arrest and what the UN described as arbitrary detention.
The 51-year-old was convicted on fraud charges in 2021 together with a colleague, following a contract dispute between the consulting company he worked for and the Central Bank of Iraq.
The UN has said Pether’s detention was unlawful, while an international court has found that his employer was not to blame for the commercial dispute.
On Monday, the Australian government said Pether was on his way to being reunited with his family at their home in Ireland, after they feared he would die in prison.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the result came after "many years of persistent advocacy" by Australia and the Irish authorities.
"I spoke to Mr Pether shortly before his departure from Baghdad and am pleased he is now free to move forward with his life," she said.
Pether was conditionally freed from an Iraqi prison last year, but was not allowed to leave the country, with Canberra saying at the time that he still faced the possibility of further legal action.
He had worked in the Middle East for nearly a decade before taking on a major reconstruction of the Central Bank of Iraq’s Baghdad headquarters in 2015.
He was arrested with his CME Consulting colleague, Egyptian Khalid Radwan, after the bank accused the pair of stealing money from the project.
After being held without charge for almost six months and then put through a swift trial, both men were sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a combined fine of $12m (A$18.4m, £8.8m).
But a 2022 UN report concluded that the case breached international law and that Pether and Khalid had been subjected to "abusive and coercive" interrogations.
Iraq’s government has previously rejected claims of mistreatment.
In 2023, the International Chamber of Commerce's (ICC) Court of Arbitration found Iraq’s central bank responsible in the dispute with CME and ordered it to pay $13m to the company.