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Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing calls for the British-Egyptian human rights defender to be deported and stripped of his British citizenship after social media posts calling for the killing of “Zionists” surfaced, increasing criticism of successive British governments who have campaigned for his release from an Egyptian prison.
Starmer said on Friday he was “delighted” that Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 44, had arrived in London, lifting a travel ban imposed on him by the Egyptian government after he was released in September from the country’s prisons where he spent more than a decade as a political prisoner.
“I would like to pay tribute to Alaa’s family and all those who have worked and campaigned for this moment,” Starmer said, adding that Abd El Fattah’s case had been a “top priority” for the Labor government since it took office in summer 2024.
However, as soon as Abd El-Fattah arrived in London, posts from around 2010 began to circulate, in which he described the killing of “Zionists” as “heroic”, called British people “dogs and monkeys”, called white people “a pestilence of the earth”, and said that police were “not human beings” and should be killed.
Abd El-Fattah apologized for his “shocking and harmful” tweets, which he said were “mainly an expression of young people’s anger and frustration in times of regional crisis” and were sometimes part of an unfortunate “online insult war”. The activist said that in the real world, he had consistently fought for equality and democracy, but as a result he had been stripped of his freedoms.
“I am disturbed that, just as I am reuniting with my family for the first time in 12 years, some of my historic tweets have been republished and used to question and attack my integrity and values, escalating to calls for my citizenship to be revoked,” he said in a statement, adding that some of the posts were “completely misconstrued and appear to be malicious.”
The opposition Conservative Party and Reform UK have both called on the government to revoke Abd El-Fattah’s British citizenship, which was granted to him in 2021 by the previous Conservative government.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform UK Party, said in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud on Sunday: “It goes without saying that people who hold racist and anti-British views like Abd El-Fattah should not be allowed to enter the UK.”
Mr Starmer is understood to have been unaware of Abd El-Fattah’s message when he defended his arrival in the UK, raising questions about how the centre-right Conservative government, which granted Mr Starmer citizenship, and the Labor government, which asked Egypt to release him, were not aware of it.
“The government has since suggested that the Prime Minister was unaware of these comments. Unfortunately, such admissions only further exacerbate the Prime Minister’s incompetence,” Mr Farage said.
Conservative MP and shadow home secretary Alicia Kearns also said she was unaware of Abd El-Fattah’s “grotesque” posts. “I trusted the process that granted Alaa his citizenship and supported his campaign for his release. Having supported his cause, I am deeply disappointed and frankly feel betrayed. I now regret it,” she said.
Luke Trill, director of polling firm More in Common, said that without a strong explanation from Labor, Abd El Fattah’s case could become a “defining moment for public opinion” and crystallize in some people’s minds the idea that the government lacks capacity and has the wrong priorities.
Mr Farage has capitalized on Mr Starmer’s blunder, but some have accused the leader of hypocrisy after he has long criticized Labor for what he calls a heavy-handed crackdown on social media posts.
