Home secretary urged to strip activists of British citizenship

British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd El Fattah has apologized after several of his old tweets resurfaced, as calls grow for him to be deported from the UK just days after he arrived in the UK following his release from an Egyptian prison.

Britain’s Conservative and Reform party leaders said the home secretary should consider whether dual national Abdel Fattah could be removed from office after social media messages showed him calling for the killing of Zionists and police officers.

this Some senior Labor MPs have also called for him to be granted citizenship, The Times reported was deleted.

After reviewing the historical posts, Abdel-Fata said: “I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologize.”

He added: “I am appalled that just as I was reunited with my family for the first time in 12 years, several of my historic tweets were retweeted and used to question and attack my integrity and values, escalating into calls for my citizenship to be revoked.”

Abdelfattah said he took accusations of anti-Semitism “very seriously” but believed some posts “completely distorted their meaning.”

Sir Keir Starmer has been criticized for saying he was “pleased” that Abdel Fattah arrived in the UK on Friday, three months after his release from an Egyptian prison, but it is understood he was unaware of the historical information.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenock and Reform Party leader Nigel Farage both said Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud should consider whether Abdel Fattah’s citizenship could be revoked so he could leave the UK quickly.

Farage wrote to Mahmoud: “It goes without saying that anyone holding racist and anti-British views, such as Mr Fatah’s, should not be allowed into the UK.”

The Foreign Office said securing Abdel Fattah’s release and reuniting him with his family in the UK has been a “long-standing priority for successive governments” but condemned his posts as “abhorrent”.

The 44-year-old was found guilty of “spreading fake news” in Egypt in 2021 for sharing a Facebook post about torture in the country, after rights groups said the trial there was grossly unfair.

He gained citizenship through his London-born mother in December 2021, when the Conservatives were in power and Dame Priti Patel was home secretary.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, who served as immigration minister under Patel but left before he was granted citizenship in September 2021, told the BBC he was unaware of the details at the time. He added that it was now clear to him that “this man should have his citizenship revoked”.

“There’s no excuse for what he wrote,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

In a resurfaced tweet from 2012, Abd El Fattah appeared to say: “I’m racist and I don’t like white people.” In another article, he said he believed “any colonialist killed, especially a Zionist, is a hero, and we need to kill more of them.”

He was also accused of saying police had no rights and “we should kill them all”.

“There’s no excuse for this language,” Philp said Monday. “People who express this kind of hatred, that kind of anti-white racism, that kind of extremism that seek to incite violence have no place in Britain.”

Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, accused Philp of “spreading ideas that have no legal basis” on the same programme.

“The most important thing is that he (Abdel-Fata) is a British citizen,” she told Today.

“He is entitled to British citizenship, which he claims to be. The British government has been doing its best to get him back to the UK and out of prison.”

Under international law, the UK has a duty to avoid making people stateless, and only people who are eligible to apply for citizenship in another country can be stripped of their British citizenship.

Badenock said Abdel Fattah’s reported comments were “abhorrent and abhorrent” and anti-British, adding that citizenship decisions “must take into account social media activity, public statements and belief patterns”.

She said: “If someone has been treated unfairly, it’s one thing to work for them to get out of jail Just as previous governments have done. It’s quite another to openly and uncritically elevate them to moral heroes. “

She added that Abdel Fata “should face a free and fair trial in Egypt” but “my sympathy ends there”.

In a letter to the home secretary, Farage said it was “astonishing” that MPs from Labor, the Conservatives or other parties had not carried out “basic due diligence” on Abdel Fattah when campaigning for his release.

He said Starmer showed “extremely poor judgment” when he posted on X welcoming the return of Abdel Fattah.

The Council of Deputies of British Jewry said the case was “deeply concerning”.

Adrian Cohen, the council’s senior vice-president, said: “His previous extremist and violent rhetoric against ‘Zionists’ and white people is posing a threat to British Jews and the wider public.

“The cross-party campaigning for such a man, and the government’s warm welcome, shows a broken system with a shocking lack of due diligence on the part of the authorities.”

Abdel Fattah acknowledged that some of his comments were “shocking and hurtful” but he believed some older messages had been misinterpreted.

“For example, sharing a tweet that accuses me of being homophobic is actually mocking homophobia,” he said in a statement.

“I paid a high price for my public support of LGBTQ+ rights in Egypt and around the world.”

Abd El Fattah is a writer, intellectual and software developer who rose to prominence during a 2011 uprising that forced Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, to resign.

He spent more than a decade in prison and was released in September after receiving a presidential pardon after a long campaign by his family and lobbying by the British government.

In 2014, Abdel Fattah was nominated for the Sakharov Prize, the European Human Rights Award, but it was withdrawn due to his 2012 tweets about Israel.

He said the comments were part of a “private conversation” that took place during Israel’s offensive in Gaza and were taken out of context.

Abd El Fattah, who was removed from the travel ban list that kept him in Egypt for three months after being released from prison, has been reunited with his 14-year-old son, who lives in Brighton.