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Robert Pether has stressed his innocence and recalled his brush with death in his first comments since the Australian engineer departed Iraq after serving more than five years in jail.

Pether and his Egyptian colleague Khalid Radwan were detained in Baghdad in 2021 after flying in for a meeting with bank officials to resolve a dispute with his engineering firm, CME Consulting.

We were innocent when we were taken on the 7th of April 2021, and we remain innocent today.

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.

She is an incredible person, someone that I have so much respect for, and being able to come home was incredible. Just the emotion that it brings is, you can’t describe it. I mean, it’s been years.

We’re mid-term, the next election’s some 18 months away, but I’ll make a decision about my future … I won four elections there and have maintained a very close relationship with many of the local community. So it’s a place near and dear to my heart. It’s a place where my kids are educated. It’s a place where we live today. And it’s no surprise to you or to your listeners, I don’t think it’s as well represented as it needs to be.

It’s more urbanised, it’s younger, it’s more highly educated. And we, as a party, hold very few of the metropolitan seats which dominate the political landscape in Australia, and that’s what we need to win back as part of a broader strategy to get back to government.

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