Australian officials are speaking to Iraqi counterparts “at all levels” in efforts to free an engineer who has been jailed in Iraq for 19 months.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials told a budget estimates hearing on Thursday they were concerned about Robert Pether’s welfare and were in touch “almost daily” with him and his family via phone calls, emails and texts.
Assistant secretary at the department’s consular operations branch Ian Gerard said officials had made “120 representations to the government of Iraq” and visited Pether 55 times since his April 2021 arrest.
“With a complex case like this, we do make representations to the government of Iraq at all levels, and we are very concerned about his welfare, and we are watching his legal proceedings closely in support of his interest,” Gerard said.
The comments came in reply to questions from Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John and followed a Crikey report that revealed Iraqi officials will seek a US$50 million fine from Pether as part of fresh legal claims.
Gerard confirmed Pether had been served with papers in jail demanding he pay the fine, but said he wasn’t sure yet about the details of the claim.
“We are certainly aware of the new papers that have been served to Mr Pether … We haven’t seen those papers ourselves,” Gerard said.
“Are you aware of the grounds on which the money has been sought?” Steele-John asked.
“No, senator,” Gerard replied.
Pether’s wife, Desree, told Crikey earlier on Thursday her husband was visited in his cell by an Iraqi official who served him with papers written in Arabic, which he was asked to sign and mark with his thumbprint.
Though Pether doesn’t understand Arabic well enough to read the documents, he was told by a cellmate the papers made a claim he owed US$50 million. The cellmate, Pether’s colleague Khalid Radwan, an Egyptian national, was asked to sign the papers as well.
“They were given it for like two minutes and told ‘Sign here,’ that’s it,” Desree said. “They weren’t allowed to keep a copy of it or anything like that.”
Gerard told Senate estimates Australian diplomats were in touch with their counterparts in Cairo and Baghdad “on their shared consular interest in this case” but Pether’s wife said on Friday more needed to be done to free him.
“Rob’s situation is deteriorating further, and also his mental state and health,” she said. “A new prime minister and president were appointed a month ago in Iraq. I’ve been asking and asking for more representation at the highest levels from Australia’s side.”
Pether and Radwan were jailed after a dispute over work the men were doing on behalf of their Dubai-based employer, CME Consulting.
The work involved building headquarters for the bank, but years of pandemic and security-related delays led to a dispute between the bank and CME, which ended up with the two employees being jailed.
A report by a United Nations body focused on arbitrary detention published earlier this year deemed the arrest of Pether and Radwan an “enforced disappearance” and may have involved torture.
Iraq is a fiction invented by the English and French after WW1. It’s Mesopotamia. My grandfather was a WW1 ambulance driver, and he told me, “Whatever you do, don’t ever go to Mesopotamia!”. Just passing on his good advice.