Emotional moment Scots sailor jailed in Bahrain hugs mum again after release (2025)

A video shared by Kirsty shows the pair in a warming embrace after Owen passed border control.

The emotional moment a Scots sailor jailed in Bahrain for trying to stop a brawl arrived home and hugged his mum for the first time has been caught on camera.

Owen Haggerty from Johnstone, Renfrewshire, touched down on home soil on Friday night after he was jailed in the Middle East in February. The 22-year-old, who serves in the Royal Navy, was sentenced to three months behind bars after a brawl in the country.

But his conviction was excused after Owen's mum, Kirsty Reynolds wrote to the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, asking for a royal pardon for her son.

A video shared by Kirsty shows the heartwarming moment mum and son were reunited after Owen passed border control. Owen, an able seaman, was on his first deployment in Bahrain when the incident happened on February 14.

The mum previously said of the ordeal: “He stayed there to try and make sure everything was okay because that’s the type of person he is and they’ve pulled him in. They examined him and he had no marks on him - nothing.

“Owen told me he was shown CCTV and it quite clearly shows him pulling the boy off the guy and that wasn’t mentioned in the court. I have a 75-page case file and it took me hours to translate it all from Arabic to English.

“He was due home the next day but I got a phone call form his navy officer informing me of what had happened. I’ll never forget it.”

Kirsty previously said she was told by navy chiefs that Owen’s detainment is a civilian matter because it happened off base. She was forced to spend thousands of pounds hiring her own lawyer.

She said: “His passing out was two years ago. This was his first deployment and he was based down in Faslane before.

"I hadn’t spoken out previously because I was just trying to do what I could to help him but can’t do this on my own anymore. I need help.”

Following his royal pardon, Paisley and Renfrewshire South Labour MP Johanna Baxter said she was "very pleased" that he had been excused. She said that the news would be a "a tremendous relief" for Mr Haggerty's family, friends, and colleagues.

However, during a business questions session in Westminster last month, Ms Baxter told the Commons no one from the UK Government would speak with her about the case when Mr Haggerty was in prison.

She told MPs: "No one would engage with me to inform me of his welfare or the current status of his case, and that was because apparently I did not have his explicit consent.

"He was sitting in a jail in Bahrain. I had his mother's consent. She was also a constituent and yet still nobody would speak to me."

A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokeswoman said: "We are supporting the family of a British national detained in Bahrain."