Hostage Aid Worldwide joyfully welcomes the end of Robert Pether’s ordeal in Iraq, after more than five years of arbitrary detention, deteriorating health and a travel ban that kept him from returning home even after his release from prison. The Australian engineer has finally been allowed to leave Iraq and reunite with his wife, Desree, and their three children in Ireland.

September 23 marks 25 years since Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak was forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily detained by Eritrean authorities. Arrested alongside several fellow journalists in September 2001, Mr. Isaak and his colleagues are now the world’s longest-detained journalists.

Hostage Aid welcomes the release of British-Iranian labor activist Mehran Raoof, who has endured nearly six years of unlawful detention in Iran. While his release remains subject to the restrictive condition of wearing an electronic ankle monitor, nevertheless, it marks the beginning of a long-overdue step toward freedom.

Finally, a deeply painful chapter that kept a family separated for over a decade, has come to an end. Hostage Aid Worldwide gladly announces the return of Shahab Dalili from Iran after years of suffering, uncertainty, and separation, ending an ordeal that had a devastating impact on all those involved. Shahab’s liberation marks a moment of long-overdue and profound relief, and emotional reunification for a family that never stopped fighting to bring him home.

Hostage Aid Worldwide is overjoyed with the long-awaited return of Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, whose release and journey back to France was announced today by French President Emmanuel Macron. After years of unlawful detention in Iran since May 2022, and months confined within the French Embassy in Tehran following their release on November 4, 2025, today marks a significant moment that once felt so distant.

On May 10, artist Gao Zhen, a U.S. lawful permanent resident, marked his 70th birthday in a Chinese prison. Hostage Aid Worldwide joins artists, musicians, writers, fellow human rights advocates, and cultural leaders in calling for his immediate release, and urges President Trump to raise both Gao Zhen’s case and the plight of his family, who remain under a travel ban in China, during this week’s summit with Xi Jinping in China.