Girl, 9, pleads to have her father freed from Iraqi jail
A NINE-YEAR-OLD girl from
Roscommon has pleaded with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison to help release her father from an Iraqi jail.
Nala Pether recorded the video for her father, Robert, an engineer and Australian citizen who was jailed along with a colleague because of a time delay in the construction of the new Iraqi Central Bank in Baghdad.
Mr Pether, 46, has been locked up in a Baghdad prison since April 2021. He was recently told that he is facing a new multi-million dollar civil trial which could lead to yet more time in prison. Mr Pether, previously based in Roscommon, was sentenced to five years in prison and must pay the Iraqi government $12million (€11.4million)
‘I really, really miss him’
before he can be released – an amount his family says he has no possibility of raising.
The case against him and a coworker was taken by the governor of the Iraqi Central Bank. A United Nations report said the continued detention of Mr Pether and his Egyptian colleague Khalid Radwan was arbitrary and demanded their release.
Mr Pether’s wife, Desree, who lives with their three children – Nala, Oscar and Flynn – in Elphin, Co. Roscommon, recorded the video of Nala appealing for her father’s release. In the video, posted on Facebook this week, Nala says: ‘He’s been imprisoned in Iraq for over a year. Please, Mr Morrison, can you help him? I really, really miss him.’
Last week, Australian foreign minister Marise Payne dismissed suggestions from Mr Pether’s family that he had been abandoned. ‘I respectfully don’t agree that we have forgotten Mr Pether,’ she said.
Desree told the Irish Daily Mail that officials from the Australian embassy in Baghdad visit her husband in prison every fortnight. She also said that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has raised the case with the Iraqi government but is restricted as Robert is not an Irish citizen.
Mr Pether and his Egyptian colleague are set to appear in court again in a number of weeks.
Mr Pether had been living in Elphin with his family and had gone to Iraq to do construction
work on the project.