Iraq’s arrest and imprisonment of Australian engineer Robert Pether was contrary to international law, constituted “enforced disappearance”, and may have involved forms of torture, a United Nations body has found.
Pether and colleague Khalid Radwan were detained in Baghdad in early April last year after they returned to Iraq to resolve a business dispute between the government and their employer, CME Consulting, which was working on the new headquarters for the Central Bank of Iraq.
Both have since been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a USD$12m fine over allegations that his firm spent money that should have gone to an architect and a subcontractor.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in a report released overnight, deemed their arrest to be arbitrary detention, demanding their immediate release.
It has also referred the case to the special rapporteur on torture. The report said it had received allegations that “[Pether] was exposed to extreme cold, threats of death, humiliation and various forms of psychological abuse.”
According to the complaint, “Mr Pether was detained in a [2x2 metre] cell with the lights permanently on,” the working group said in its report. “He was reportedly blindfolded, interrogated, screamed at, threatened, insulted and shown torture rooms.”
“In the first 12 days of detention, Mr Pether lost 15kgs and became severely dehydrated. He was barred from any contact with the outside world for the first 19 days of his detention and was permitted to go outside for only two hours,” the complaint said.
The report also said that Pether was reluctant to talk about his experiences in jail due to fear of reprisal.
The report found reports of “abusive and coercive interrogations” to be credible. It also found credible allegations that Pether had been forced to sign a statement in Arabic, which he did not understand. Iraqi authorities also likely obtained evidence from him improperly and after ill-treatment and torture, the report says.
“The Working Group expresses its gravest concern at the allegations of torture and ill-treatment, which constitute a prima facie breach of the absolute prohibition of torture, which is a peremptory norm of international law.”
The UN received no response from the Iraqi government to the allegations, something it said was regrettable.
The report found the pair were given no reason for their arrest at the time of their detention. For the next three days, no one knew their whereabouts or situation.
Enforced disappearance of this kind was a “particularly aggravated form of arbitrary detention”, the report said.
“Pether and Radwan were held in a situation of de facto enforced disappearance,” the report said. “Such deprivation of liberty, entailing a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or to acknowledge their detention, lacks any valid legal basis under any circumstance.”
Their trial was also found to be compromised. The report said it viewed with concern allegations that Pether’s evidence was mistranslated to indicate guilt and said that even during the trial “Pether and Radwan did not have clarity around their charges”, with charges being dropped during the hearing and replaced with others.
“In the light of the above, the Working Group concludes that the violations of the right to a fair trial and due process are of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty of Messrs. Pether and Radwan is arbitrary.”
In a statement, Desree Pether, Robert’s wife, said the report was a “total vindication” of the position of both her husband and Radwan, which they had held from the outset.
“We just want Iraq to now do the right thing,” she said.
Pether’s lawyer, Peter Griffin, said his team have already reached out to the Iraqi government to urge for the pair’s release.
“This is a very powerful decision,” she said. “The UN have found in no uncertain terms that Robert and Khalid’s arrest was unlawful and arbitrary.”
The Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, has previously said she has raised the case with the Iraqi government.
“We have sought clarity about, as I’ve said, the nature of the complaints that have resulted in Mr Pether’s detention,” she told Perth radio last year. “And if it is indeed a civil matter, a contractual matter, then we would seek for it to be treated in that way.”
