Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has expressed his relief at the return to Ireland of anti-corruption activist Yasser Eljuboori, who was detained in Iraq for a number of days last week.
Mr Martin told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show that Mr Eljuboori, who is an Irish citizen, had been reunited with his wife Laura Wickham and three children. Ms Wickham had texted him a photo pf her husband returning home.
It had been a joyous occasion for the family, he said. There had not been any comment until Mr Eljuboori was safe home on Irish soil as there had been “hiccups” at the weekend.
Mr Martin explained that when the charges were dropped by the Prime Minister’s office, it then emerged that there were further charges from the mayor and the head of the investment authority.
“I want to thank the Iraqi foreign minister, who I spoke with last weekend, who had contacted the Prime Minister's office, and they rang again Sunday morning following the latest developments. And he intervened also there.
“So the result, he got his passport back on Monday morning. I want to thank our ambassador in Jordan, Marianne Bolger and the entire team there for the consular assistance and the team at headquarters who have worked with the family and obviously the legal teams working with the family.”
When asked about the diplomatic challenge in getting Mr Eljuboori home to Ireland given his high profile as an anticorruption activist, Mr Martin said that the situation in Iraq was “much more complex than anything we experience.
“Because the danger would be that if it had gone into the prosecutorial process or if it had entered the courts and he was convicted under this Article 26, which seems a very wide ranging article, that if you attack or criticise public officials, you can be held up and you could be criminalised for doing that, and then you have a lot of tribal approaches and families take these things personally.
"So it could have been a very serious situation if it had gone through the court process and if he had been convicted of whatever. Because we know from other cases that it's extremely difficult once people are convicted to get people out of situations like that.”
