Australian engineer Robert Pether has been released from his Iraq jail cell more than four years after he was arbitrarily detained.
Pether was working on a project to help build the new headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq when he was detained in Baghdad in April 2021.
He had flown in for a meeting with bank officials to resolve a dispute they were having with his engineering firm, CME Consulting, over the project.
Pether was later sentenced and fined over allegations that his firm spent money that should have gone to an architect and a subcontractor.
In a report in March 2022, the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention found Pether had been arbitrarily detained in breach of international law.
It also heard allegations that Pether and his Egyptian colleague’s trials were compromised and that he had been subjected to torture-like practices. The body called for their immediate and unconditional release.
After more than four years in prison, Pether has now been released.
Pether’s wife, Desree, welcomed the development and said her family were “grateful to everyone who contributed to this happening”.
But she also warned her husband remains trapped in Iraq due to a travel ban, and urgently needs medical care.
“He’s unrecognisable,” she told Guardian Australia. “So frail and weak. He needs urgent medical care and that’s not possible in Iraq.”
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the Australian government had raised the case with Iraqi authorities more than 200 times.
“I want to thank Australian officials for their tireless work on Mr Pether’s case, including Australia’s special envoy who travelled to Iraq in recent weeks to negotiate for this outcome,” she said.
The case has prompted prime ministerial intervention, with Anthony Albanese raising Pether’s detention with then Iraqi prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in 2022.
In 2022, the Guardian obtained an emotional letter from Pether to his family, penned from behind bars. The letter warned his family that his prognosis was “bleak” and that he was facing a potential “death sentence”.
Pether also wrote of his daily torment about how he should break it to his children that he might not be coming home.
“How do you tell a little girl who loves unicorns and cats that her daddy will not be coming home? How do you tell your children that you are proud of them, but will not be sharing the accolades (and pitfalls) of their lives with them?,” Pether wrote.
“And toughest of all, how do you tell your wife, who is very much the other half of you, that you will not be keeping the promise you made to grow old together?”
