An Australian-born engineer resident in Co Roscommon has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and fined $12 million by an Iraqi court.
The Irish Times reports that Robert Pether, who is an Irish resident alongside his wife and children, was handed down the sentence earlier this week.
It applies also to Mr Pether’s Egyptian-born colleague, Khalid Radwan. Both men had been working on a new headquarters in Baghdad for the Central Bank of Iraq when they were arrested last April without explanation.
Mr Pether’s wife Desree Pether, who lives in Elphin with the couple’s children, teenage sons Flynn and Oscar and daughter Nala (8), said her husband has committed no crime.
“They have committed no crime,” she posted on social media. “This is a malicious prosecution, a complete fabrication.”
Ensnared in dispute
Mr Pether was arrested while in the offices of the head of the bank and has remained incarcerated since, but has not been told specifically what is alleged against him.
The engineer appears to have become ensnared in a dispute over money between his employer, CME Consulting which in 2015 won a $33 million contract relating to the construction of the Zaha Hadid-designed new Central Bank offices, and the Iraqi government.
While the Australian government has made representations to the Iraqi authorities on behalf of Mr Pether, the Irish Government has declined to involve itself despite requests from his Irish resident family.
In July, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not “directly intervene in the internal affairs or processes of another jurisdiction, including the provision of consular assistance to citizens of that jurisdiction.”
Mr Pether’s case has been taken up by six international lawyers who have petitioned the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene.
