‘I’m here baby, I’m here’: Husband reunited with pregnant wife in UK after fleeing Sudan
Nagi held his wife Reem in a tight embrace for more than 40 seconds.
They were reunited at a hotel near Stansted Airport after he escaped violence in Sudan on one of the last evacuation flights out of the country.
Tears turned to chuckles when Nagi cradled Reem’s belly to talk to their unborn child.
“I’m here baby, I’m here,” he said.
Nagi kisses his wife’s belly
The couple have been married for three years and had applied to the UK government for Nagi to move to live with Reem in Newcastle.
His passport and identity documents were with the British Embassy in Sudan when the war started.
“To be honest, I thought I’m doing my best but I don’t think this is going to work,” Reem told Sky News.
“They’ve been turning away people who are on work permits and who have biometric ID cards. So I thought they’re never going to accept my husband.”
Nagi and Reem embrace at a hotel near Stansted Airport
Reem, a radiology registrar in Newcastle, turned to help from the British charity Goodwill Caravan.
“I received an email at 3am saying he could board the last plane,” she said.
“Nagi was, at the time, 10 hours from the airfield. By the time he got there the area was being bombed and I felt like I’d dragged him from safety right into war.”
Read more on Sudan:
Mayhem is unfolding on the docks of Port Sudan
Why evacuating civilians is different to diplomats
What’s happening in Sudan?
Nagi travelled 800km, spent $700 (£557) and went through six or seven checkpoints to arrive at Wadi Saeedna airfield near Khartoum.
“When I arrived at the airfield they put an X on my hand. That signals that a person can’t leave the country,” Nagi said.
The red stain was still on his hand as he told Sky News how his country descended into chaos.
There is a food shortage in the capital, he said.
There is also no electricity, confusion over fighters using fake uniforms, and dead bodies lying in the streets.
“There are witness reports of dogs ripping at corpses of people whose numbers may not have been included in the 500 reported to have died,” he said.
He added: “I would call it a ghost town.
“Nobody knows who is fighting who because there are reports that fighters swap uniforms.
“Businesses have closed, large populations are running away, and the worst thing is not knowing where we were running to and not knowing who we could run to.”
It comes as the last flight from Khartoum arrived at Stansted Airport this evening.
Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show after six years.
The 53-year-old, who recently lost her mother to cancer, will present her last show on Friday, 20 December.
Ball leaves Wogan House with her replacement, Scott Mills. Pic: PA
She said she was leaving to focus on family, but will remain part of the Radio 2 team and will give further details next year.
Announcing the news on her Tuesday show, she said: “After six years of fun times alongside you all on the breakfast show, I’ve decided it’s time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.
“You know I think the world of you all, listeners, and it truly has been such a privilege to share the mornings with you, to go through life’s little ups and downs, we got through the lockdown together, didn’t we?
“We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats.”
Scott Mills will replace Ball on the breakfast show following her departure next month.
“Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1,” he said.
“She’s done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”
Hugging outside the BBC building on the day of the announcement, Ball said she was “really chuffed for my mate and really excited about it”.
Ball was the first female host of both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows, starting at the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1998, and taking over her current Radio 2 role from Chris Evans in 2020 after he left the show.
She took a break from hosting her show over the summer, returning in September.
Ahead of her stint in radio, Ball – who is the daughter of children’s presenter Johnny Ball – co-hosted the BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine show Live & Kicking alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996.
She has two children, Woody and Nelly, with her ex-husband, DJ and musician Norman Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim.
Ball said in her announcement her last show towards the end of December will be “just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans”.
“While I’m stepping away from the Breakfast Show, I’m not disappearing entirely – I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the New Year,” she added.
“I’m excited to embrace my next chapter, including being a mum in the mornings, and I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”
Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: “Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019, and I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that she’ll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family.”
Mills, 51, got his first presenting role aged just 16 for a local station in Hampshire, and went on to present in Bristol and Manchester, before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1998.
He’s previously worked as a cover presenter on Radio 2, but this is his first permanent role on the station.
UK
More prisoners are being transferred to less secure jails to tackle overcrowding crisis, Sky News understands
The prison service is starting to recategorise the security risk of offenders to ease capacity pressures, Sky News understands.
It involves lowering or reconsidering the threshold of certain offenders to move them from the closed prison estate (category A to C) to the open estate (category D) because there are more free cell spaces there.
Examples of this could include discounting adjudications – formal hearings when a prisoner is accused of breaking the rules – for certain offenders, so they don’t act as official reasons not to transport them to a lower-security jail.
Prisoners are also categorised according to an Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) status. There are different levels – basic, standard and enhanced – based on how they keep to the rules or display a commitment to rehabilitation.
Usually ‘enhanced’ prisoners take part in meaningful activity – employment and training – making them eligible among other factors, to be transferred to the open estate.
Insiders suggest this system in England and Wales is being rejigged so that greater numbers of ‘standard’ prisoners can transfer, whereas before it would more typically be those with ‘enhanced’ status.
Open prisons have minimal security and allow eligible prisoners to spend time on day release away from the prison on license conditions to carry out work or education.
The aim is to help reintegrate them back into society once they leave. As offenders near the end of their sentence, they are housed in open prisons.
Many of those released as part of the early release scheme in October after serving 40% of their sentence were freed from open prisons.
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Overcrowding in UK prisons
They were the second tranche of offenders freed as part of this scheme, and had been sentenced to five years or more.
Despite early release measures, prisons are still battling a chronic overcrowding crisis. The male estate is almost full, operating at around 97% capacity.
Read more from Sky News:
Find out what it’s really like inside prison?
Prison recalls soar as justice system struggles
Campaigners demand IPP sentences are scrapped
Sky News understands there continue to be particular pinch points across the country.
Southwest England struggled over the weekend with three space-related ‘lockouts’ – which means prisoners are held in police suites or transferred to other jails because there is no space.
One inmate is believed to have been transported from Exeter to Cardiff.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. We took the necessary action to stop our prisons from overflowing and to protect the public.
“This is not a new scheme. Only less-serious offenders who meet a strict criteria are eligible, and the Prison Service can exclude anyone who can’t be managed safely in a category D prison.”
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