By Lucinda Garbutt-Young in Canberra

An Australian man jailed in Iraq for years has been reunited with his family and spoken for the first time since his release from the Middle East nation. 

Robert Pether was arrested alongside a colleague following a dispute between the Iraqi government and his employer, a consulting firm working on headquarters for the country’s central bank.

The engineer was sentenced in 2021 to five years in prison and fined millions of dollars, before being released on conditional bail in 2025. He was then subject to a travel ban preventing him from coming home.

“I was released from prison hours away from death. My body was shutting down after months of critical illness and excruciating pain, but I remained trapped in Iraq,” speaking to media at Dublin airport on Monday night Australian time.

Mr Pether’s family has for years said his admission of guilt was coerced, and that he signed documents in Arabic he did not understand.

“We were innocent when we were taken on April 7, 2021, and we remain innocent today,” he said.

“(Iraq) should not ever be allowed to do this to another person or another family again.

”But today, more than anything, I want to talk about the people who carried us through it,” he said, before fighting back tears to praise his wife and children.

He was looking forward to “a bacon sandwich”, he said.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Monday welcomed the decision to let Mr Pether leave Iraq.

“I spoke to Mr Pether shortly before his departure from Baghdad and am pleased he is now free to move forward with his life and be reunited with his family,” she said in a statement.

“Mr Pether had been imprisoned in Iraq for more than four years and was later subject to travel restrictions that prevented him from leaving the country.”

A United Nations report on arbitrary detention detailed allegations that Mr Pether was subject to extreme cold, humiliation, threats of death and forms of psychological abuse, including being shown a torture room.

News all day, every day at CityNews.com.au.