‘It was a terrible shock to see how bad he is' – wife of Robert Pether freed from Iraqi jail pleads with Government to ‘get him home'

Irish Independent

11 hours ago

Desree Pether said her husband's release on bail is a 'step in the right direction', but that the family still has another mountain to climb, as he is now on a travel ban.
'We don't know the conditions of the travel ban yet because this all happened late last night and now it is Eid Mubarak, a religious holiday in Iraq,' she said yesterday.
Ms Pether said the family will not learn what the ban entails or how long it will last until the end of the the Islamic festival on Tuesday evening.
'When he was to be released in January it was supposed to be an indefinite travel ban. I was going to be shouting that it needs to be cancelled anyway.
'But now having seen the state of him, I am on the war path,' Ms Pether said.
She said that whoever put the travel ban in place does not know what her husband looks like nor the 'terribly dangerous condition he is in'.
'Nobody in any good conscience would continue on with this if they knew. He is emaciated, he looks like the terrible condition you would see a prisoner being released,' she said.
'He is grey, like he never was before, both his skin and his hair. His eyes are sunken and dark and he is skin and bone.
'It was a terrible shock to see how bad he is. We knew that he had been sick for the last four months, really sick, but we weren't expecting him to look like that,' she added.
Ms Pether said it is not just because of the prison conditions, but that her husband has an illness relating to his digestion.
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'He can't keep any food down beside rice, cereal and potato,' she said.
'He is extremely malnourished and very, very weak.'
Mr Pether, who is originally from Australia but had been living with his wife and three children in Elphin, Co Roscommon, before travelling to Iraq, has been unable to receive medical attention since getting bail on Thursday.
Mr Pether was employed by CME Consulting to create a new headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq, having previously worked in the Middle East.
Following a business dispute between their employer and the Central Bank, Mr Pether and his Egyptian colleague, Khaled Zaghloul, were invited to a meeting with the governor of the Central Bank, where they were arrested and later charged with fraud.
Ms Pether said her husband should never have been there in the first place.
She referenced three international court rulings and a UN report stating that he is innocent, a hostage, in arbitrary detention and was subjected to torture.
The family have been in contact with him on video since his release on bail on Thursday, the first such time since his detention in April, 2021.
'It was nice to see him [on video], as much as it was a shock to talk to him face-to-face for the first time in four years,' Ms Pether said.
Until this week, the only contact they had were phone calls lasting just a few minutes once or twice a week, at irregular times.
'You constantly carry the phone with you terrified to put it down because it would be the only chance for him to give up information so that we could try and fight for him from the outside,' Ms Pether said.
'I would be afraid to put it down to have a shower. I would try to have the shower really early or late at night.'
The couple have three children, Flynn (22) Oscar (20) and Nala (12).
'They have grown up significantly since he was taken and they have missed so much with him. It was a really big shock for them to see their dad looking like that,' Ms Pether said.
She credited the Irish Government, which she said has gone 'above and beyond', with the Australian government also providing consular assistance.
Mr Pether, who is currently in Baghdad, spoke to Tánaiste Simon Harris following his release on Thursday night.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, speaking yesterday, described it as a 'very distressing' and 'upsetting' situation for the family, adding that he is worried about Mr Pether's well-being.
'The Government has been making continuing efforts for quite a long number of years now. I believe this is a good first step,' he said.
'He's an Australian citizen, which has been a complicating factor in all of this.'
On the Irish Government's efforts to get her husband home, Ms Pether said: 'Just keep pushing. Keep helping. Please keep helping.'