Australia – Crikey News, January 17, 2025
Robert Pether, who has been arbitrarily detained in Iraq since 2021, is facing new ‘confected and ludicrous’ accusations after being rearrested while in jail.
An Australian man who has spent almost four years in an Iraqi prison cell was rearrested on the eve of his expected release and is facing new “confected and ludicrous” accusations, his lawyer tells Crikey.
Engineer Robert Pether and a colleague of his were arrested in Baghdad on April 7, 2021, by 12 police officers who stormed a meeting the men were having with the governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, following a contractual dispute between the men’s employer and the bank.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in November of that year that Pether and his colleague, Egyptian engineer Khalid Radwan, were arbitrarily detained and that their right to a fair trial and due process had been violated.
According to the UN, it is alleged the pair were detained as a way to “exercise leverage over their employer”, United Arab Emirates-based CME Consulting, which had been hired to construct new headquarters for the central bank before the project broke down and a dispute over payments arose.
