Dad held ‘hostage’ after Iraq deal sours

Australian engineer claims he has been held captive as part of a sinister plot to extort his Dubai-based employer.

Robert Pether with his children Oscar, Flynn and Nala.

An Australian engineer claims he has been unlawfully held captive in an Iraqi prison for more than three months as part of a sinister plot to extort millions of dollars in free labour from his Dubai-based employer.

Sydney father-of-three Robert Pether marked his 100th day behind bars in a heavily guarded facility on the outskirts of Baghdad on Friday but fears he is no closer to securing his freedom even though he has not been charged with committing any offence.

The 47-year-old mechanical engineer, 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 with the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad on April 7.

The meeting had been scheduled to discuss a multimillion-dollar blowout in construction costs of the financial institution’s new headquarters in the city in what had been billed as the nation’s grandest infrastructure investment since the end of the Iraq War a decade ago.

The Australian has previously revealed that the men were held in solitary confinement for three weeks and forbidden from contacting their families before being transferred to a shared cell with 18 other prisoners – mostly military officers – at a high-grade prison just outside the Iraqi capital at the end of April.

Mr Pether’s wife, Desree, said her husband and his colleague Khalid Zaghloul had been effectively taken hostage after their employer, CME Consulting, refused to complete the construction of the new bank for free after the initial timeframe for the four-year project blew out by several months.

“There was an extension (to the project’s completion) due to unforeseen circumstances related to Covid and the Iraqi government wanted them to work for several months for free,” Ms Pether told The Australian.

“Robert’s employer said no, it wasn’t fair to work for free, and the Iraqi government responded by arresting Robert and Khalid.”

She said the Iraqi government then tried to force her husband’s company into completing the bank’s construction free of charge in exchange for the men’s release.

The length of their incarceration became even less clear when CME Consulting was officially dumped from the project and another contractor was brought in to finish the job.

“It was a blatant case of leverage in a contract dispute,” Ms Pether said. “But even that offer seems to be off the table now.

“As of today, it’s been 100 days that they’ve been held captive, with absolutely no charges laid against either of them.

“It’s a warning to others about what they will do if contract negotiations break down.”

Ms Pether, who is originally from the Blue Mountains but has been raising the couple’s three children in Ireland for the past year-and-a-half, said the entire family had been thrown into turmoil by Mr Pether’s arrest and detention but that they had refused to lose hope he would be released.

She said her husband’s lawyers had filed a complaint with the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention a fortnight ago and were awaiting a response.

She added the family had been underwhelmed by the response from the Australian government to her husband’s predicament.

“We get to talk to him on Mondays when the (Australian) embassy is there to visit him, and for the past three weeks we’ve been allowed to have a five-minute call with him on Sundays,” she said.

“Outside of that, we have no idea what is going on. Our entire lives have been put on hold. We have missed out on getting to spend his birthday with him.

“Our eight-year-old daughter, Nala, doesn’t understand what’s happening. And last month, he missed out on seeing our son Flynn turn 18 and graduate from high school, and also missed our son Oscar’s 16th birthday. It’s been absolutely devastating.”