Aussie man Robert Pether is detained in Iraq

An Australian father of three has been able to speak to his family for the first since he was seized by Iraqi police and thrown in prison three weeks ago.

Robert Pether.

An Australian father of three has been able to speak to his family for the first since he was seized by Iraqi police and thrown in prison three weeks ago after being tricked into attending a fake business meeting with one of the country’s leading institutions.

Robert Pether, who grew up on Sydney’s north shore and attended Knox Grammar School, was arrested, along with an Egyptian colleague, when they arrived for an appointment set up by the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad on April 7.

The 46-year-old mechanical engineer had been in the country for about a week to try to resolve a contractual dispute between his Dubai-based building company and the bank over the construction of the financial institution’s landmark new headquarters which has been in the works for about four years.

Mr Pether’s wife, Desree, said he had spent a fortnight in solitary confinement after his arrest before being moved into a cell with his colleague and that she had only been able to talk to him for the first time since he was locked up on Tuesday night.

“He’s been in absolute despair,” Ms Pether said. “He was kept in solitary confinement for the first two weeks, literally in the suit he was wearing when they arrested him, and only permitted to see a lawyer in front of a judge for 20 minutes in that whole time.

“He doesn’t have any idea what he’s been charged with because everything’s in Arabic, all he knows is that it’s some sort of dispute between his employer and their client, the Central Bank of Iraq.

“The bank is the first major construction project in Iraq since the war and it’s an extremely high-profile development – it was designed by Zaha Hadid, who is Iraq’s most famous female architect, and it was her last design before she died in 2016.

“They were about three quarters of the way through the construction when some sort of contract dispute arose between Rob’s employers and the client and he’d spent the last couple of months trying to resolve it.

“The Central Bank of Iraq asked whether Rob and one of his managers could meet with them in Baghdad to sort it all out. He arrived in Iraq on April 1 and worked for about a week before the meeting.

“He walked into it thinking everything would be resolved. But it was never a real meeting – it was entrapment – and the moment he arrived, he was taken into custody.”

Ms Pether, who is originally from the Blue Mountains but now based in Ireland with the couple’s three children, aged eight, 15 and 17, said she felt her husband had been betrayed by his Iraqi clients and let down by Australian officials she feels have done little to secure his release.

“That’s the only way to describe it,” she said.

“Rob has been extremely proud of all the work he has been doing to help rebuild Iraq and now he’s locked away in a cell with no idea about what is going to happen to him next.”