UK opposition leaders demand human rights activist be stripped of citizenship for past tweets
LONDON (AP) — Political opposition leaders in the United Kingdom have called for a human rights activist to be stripped of his citizenship over past social media posts allegedly containing violent and antisemitic language within days of the dual national returning to Britain after years in Egyptian prisons.
The leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties also demanded the deportation of Alaa Abd el-Fattah following the discovery of tweets from more than a decade ago in which he allegedly endorsed killing “Zionists’’ and police.
“The comments he made on social media about violence against Jews, white people and the police, amongst others, are disgusting and abhorrent,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch wrote Monday in the Daily Mail newspaper.
Abd el-Fattah on Monday apologized for the tweets while saying some had been taken out of context and misrepresented.
The activist has spent years in Egyptian prisons, most recently for allegedly spreading fake news about the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He returned to the U.K. on Friday after Egyptian authorities lifted a travel ban that had forced him to remain in the country since he was released in September.
But he immediately became embroiled in controversy after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” that Abd el-Fattah was back in the UK and had been reunited with his family.
That triggered the republication of messages on the social media platform Twitter, now X, that were described as antisemitic, homophobic and anti-British.
Abd el-Fattah expressed shock at the turn of events in a statement released Monday.
“I am shaken that, just as I am being reunited with my family for the first time in 12 years, several historic tweets of mine have been republished and used to question and attack my integrity and values, escalating to calls for the revocation of my citizenship,’’ he said.
The remarks were mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises such as the wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza and the rise of police brutality against young people in Egypt, Abd el-Fattah said.
“Looking at the tweets now — the ones that were not completely twisted out of their meaning — I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologise,’’ he said in the statement.
But that has not staunched the flow of anger from politicians.
Reform Party leader Nigel Farage described the posts as “abhorrent” and said they showed Abd el-Fattah held views that are “completely opposed to our British way of life.”
“It should go without saying that anyone who possesses racist and anti-British views such as those of Mr. elFattah (sic) should not be allowed into the UK,” Farage wrote in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who oversees immigration matters.