A family in Roscommon are facing into Christmas this week without their father because he continues to be imprisoned in Iraq over a legal wrangle.
Robert Pether had settled with his wife and three children in Elphin in recent years while he worked abroad on engineering projects in Iraq and other countries.
He had travelled back to finish a project in Iraq in April of this year when he was arrested because of a row over the building of the banking headquarters in Baghdad.
He's been in prison there since, and he and an Egyptian colleague were sentenced to five years, and fined €10 million euro, at a hearing in August.
Desree Pether says the family had all been secretly hoping that some miracle would happen to free Robert, but they're now resigned to being without him this Christmas, and for an unknown amount of time
