Australian woman’s fury at DFAT over husband’s 1000 days in Iraqi jail

Desree Pether has not seen her husband, Robert, since he was jailed in Iraq three years ago when a business trip went horribly wrong. Now, she says she is told to stop talking about his case — Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advise her that campaigning for him would make things more difficult to get him out.

DFAT’s treatment of those wrongfully detained overseas has come under the spotlight after members of the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance successfully lobbied for a Senate inquiry into the way the department manages cases.

Desree Pether and her husband, Robert, before he was jailed in Iraq.Credit: Desree Pether

Alliance director Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who spent two years in an Iranian prison, told this masthead the government needed to drop its insistence on secrecy when negotiating the freedom of Australians, warning some families “go rogue” to raise awareness.

The Senate inquiry will investigate how Australia can increase public awareness of the regimes that engage in “hostage diplomacy”, the current management of wrongful detention by the department, and communications with families and detainees.

Robert Pether, an Australian engineer and father of three, was arrested in Iraq alongside an Egyptian colleague in April 2021. They were both jailed following a dispute between their employer and the Central Bank of Iraq, and his wife insists this is a form of hostage diplomacy deployed by a government trying to force a resolution.

Former prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert has become an advocate for the release of Robert Pether.

In March 2022, a report from the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found the imprisonment of Pether and his colleague, Khalid Radwan, to be arbitrary and in contravention of international law.

The working group said the two men were forcibly “disappeared” for the first few days of their detention and their capacity to defend themselves had been “undermined and compromised” during subsequent court proceedings.

It also found that allegations the men were subject to “abusive and coercive interrogations” were credible and that evidence used in their trial had been “improperly obtained”.

Desree Pether claims she has major problems communicating and co-operating with DFAT in resolving her husband’s case and bringing him home, saying she will write a submission to the upcoming inquiry advocating for a standalone office to deal with overseas detention issues.

“I stopped [speaking about Robert’s case] about six weeks or seven weeks ago now, in the hope that significant things are going on behind the scenes,” she said.

‘It’s a living hell. And every week, we wonder what new, fresh level of hell we’re going to face. It really doesn’t need to be this hard.’

Desree Pether

“It has been a very, very difficult journey and after over three years … I have extreme anxiety, I have panic attacks and a lot of mental health issues and a significant part of that is dealing with my own government.

“It’s a living hell. And every week, we wonder what new, fresh level of hell we’re going to face. It really doesn’t need to be this hard.”

The government says it has been working hard for Robert Pether’s release. Australia has made more than 170 representations, including by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to their Iraqi counterparts, on behalf of Pether, the most recent on June 12.

A spokesperson for Wong said the government had consistently advocated for Pether’s rights and welfare but Australia was unable to intervene in another country’s legal or court processes.

“However, we continue to convey our expectations that Mr Pether is entitled to due process, humane and fair treatment, and access to his legal team,” they said.

“We will continue to support Mr Pether and his family and to advocate for his interests and wellbeing.”

The last inquiry into the government’s response to kidnapping of Australians overseas was in 2011. It recommended DFAT examine ways to improve its communication with the media and family members at the outset of a crisis.

Journalist and member of the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance, Peter Greste, says when he was detained in Egypt for 400 days after covering the country’s political crisis for Al Jazeera in 2013, he smuggled out two letters without asking DFAT’s permission.

“DFAT’s default is to tell everyone just keep quiet, don’t make a fuss … let the diplomats do their work, let’s not elevate it … that’s the kind of standard de facto playbook. I don’t think that’s always appropriate,” Greste said.

“I circumvented that by smuggling two letters out.”

Since his release, Greste has campaigned for media freedom and also advised Lamisse Hamouda, whose father, Hazem, was arrested and imprisoned in 2018 without charge for more than a year in Egypt.

“She and her mother were initially told to just play it quiet. She reached out to me and said, ‘what do you think?’, and I said, ‘no, don’t be quiet’,” Greste said.

“We just kind of elevated it from a bunch of different points of pressure which manged to get him out.”

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