Australian engineer Robert Pether has landed in Ireland after he was allowed to leave Iraq where he was arrested and detained five years ago.
The 51-year-old was jailed on fraud charges in 2021 alongside a colleague amid a contract dispute between the consulting firm he worked for and the Central Bank of Iraq.
The UN has said Pether’s detention was illegal, and an international court has ruled his employer is not responsible for the business disagreement.
Shortly after arriving at Dublin Airport on Monday morning, local time, Pether was reunited with his family and thanked his wife and children who “have lived this every single day with me”.
“Our children lost years with their dad,” Pether, whose family lives in Ireland, said, fighting back tears.
“They watched their mum fight every day to try and bring me home. They grew up with uncertainty, fear and circumstances that no child should ever have to carry.”
Describing his wife Desree as “incredible”, Pether said her tireless years-long efforts to have him freed while also “holding our family together” had taken an “enormous toll on her too”.
Hours after his release, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said it followed “many years of persistent advocacy” by Canberra 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.
“I’m hugely relieved,” his wife Desree told the BBC in a statement before her husband landed.
“It’s been an absolute nightmare, especially these last few months. So many obstacles and plot twists right up to the last minute.”
Pether was conditionally released from prison in Iraq last year, but barred from leaving the country, with Canberra at the time saying he continued to face the prospect of more legal proceedings.
Pether worked in the Middle East for almost a decade before taking on a huge rebuild of the Central Bank of Iraq’s Baghdad headquarters in 2015.
He was arrested alongside his CME Consulting colleague, Egyptian Khalid Radwan, after the bank accused the men of stealing money from the project.
After being held without charge for almost six months, and then subjected to a speedy trial, the two were each given a five-year jail sentence and a joint fine of $12m (A$18.4m, £8.8m). The BBC was unable to confirm whether Radwan was also released.
However, a 2022 report from the UN determined that the case contravened international law, and that Pether and Khalid had been subjected to “abusive and coercive” interrogations.
Iraq’s government has previously denied allegations of ill treatment.
In 2023, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Court of Arbitration ruled that Iraq’s central bank was at fault in the dispute with CME, and ordered it to pay $13m to the company.
