Alaa Abd el-Fattah pushes back against calls for revoking his UK citizenship Submitted by Alex MacDonald on Mon, 12/29/2025 - 09:33 British-Egyptian activist apologises 'unequivocally' for 'hurtful' social media posts but says some have been misinterpreted Alaa Abd el-Fattah is a 44-year-old Egyptian political activist (AFP) Off British- Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has hit back at UK politicians calling for his citizenship to be stripped after they cited a number of 15-year-old social media posts in which he appeared to call for violence against Zionists, the police and British forces in Iraq. The 44-year-old is one of the most well-known figures of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and was jailed following Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's seizure of power in a 2013 military coup. After being pardoned and released earlier this year, he flew to join his family in the UK last week. However, after Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the activist's arrival, a number of opposition politicians began highlighting social media posts made by Abd el-Fattah in 2010 that they claimed were antisemitic and advocating violence. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage wrote on X on Sunday that he had reported the activist to the Metropolitan Police's counterterrorism unit while Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch wrote in the Daily Mail that he should be stripped of his citizenship. In a statement on Monday, Abd el-Fattah responded to the controversy, saying he was "shaken" to be receiving the attacks so soon after reuniting with his family. "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 wrote. "They were mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises (the wars on Iraq, on Lebanon and Gaza), and the rise of police brutality against Egyptian youth." He added, however, that a number of the accusations made against him, such as that he advocated homophobia or Holocaust denial, had been misinterpreted. "For example, a tweet being shared to allege homophobia on my part was actually ridiculing homophobia. I have paid a steep price for my public support for LGBTQ rights in Egypt and the world," he wrote. "Another tweet has been wrongly interpreted to suggest Holocaust denial - but in fact the exchange shows that I was clearly mocking Holocaust denial." Despite being one of the most prominent secular Egyptians and having previously described himself as non-religious, some British outlets have described Abd el-Fattah as an "alleged Islamist extremist". Other outlets accused him of being "anti-white" after pointing to an alleged social media post in which he wrote: “I’m telling you that I hate white people.” In another post cited as "anti-British" he allegedly wrote in 2010: "So the brilliant British dogs and monkeys really think terrorists will reveal their plans on Twitter.” Pro-revolution figure Abd el-Fattah was a major figure in the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations that saw mass protests on the streets of Egypt that ousted longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. Despite optimism and free and fair elections, in 2013 the Egyptian military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government and began a mass crackdown on the group, as well as other anti-Sisi campaigners. Abd el-Fattah was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2014 for protesting without permission, a sentence later reduced to five years. Egypt lifts travel ban on activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah Read More » He was released in 2019 but remained on parole. He was rearrested later that year and sentenced to a further five years on charges of spreading fake news, an accusation frequently used against dissidents in Egypt. Two months before his release, a Cairo criminal court removed Abd el-Fattah's name from the list of terror suspects following investigations that found he no longer had any ties to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups estimate that more than 60,000 political prisoners are languishing in Egyptian prisons. Egypt ranks 18th out of 100 on Freedom House's Freedom in the World index , which rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 208 countries, with higher rankings indicating less freedom. Human Rights Watch has described the Egyptian government as being engaged in "wholesale repression, systematically detaining and punishing peaceful critics and activists and effectively criminalising peaceful dissent". "Thousands of detainees remained locked up in dire conditions in lengthy pretrial detention or on sentences stemming from unjust trials," it said in its 2025 world report. Middle East Eye contacted the UK Home Office to ask whether they were considering deporting Abd el-Fattah, but had not received a response at time of publication. Human Rights News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0