Stripping Alaa Abd el-Fattah of citizenship would be a 'dangerous' precedent, rights groups warn Submitted by Alex MacDonald on Tue, 12/30/2025 - 11:24 Denaturalising British-Egyptian activist over social media posts would be 'authoritarian overreach', say watchdogs British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah embraces his mother, writer Laila Soueif (L), and his sister Sanaa Seif (R), in Cairo on 23 September 2025 (Mohamed el-Raai/AFP) Off Rights groups have warned that stripping the citizenship of British- Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah over 15-year-old social media posts would set a dangerous precedent that could threaten fundamental freedoms. The 44-year-old, one of the most well-known figures of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, spent much of the past decade in prison after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's seizure of power in Egypt 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 since 2008 that they claimed were antisemitic and advocated violence. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, 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. Despite Abd el-Fattah apologising for his comments on Monday, many of which he said had been misinterpreted or taken out of context, calls for him to lose his citizenship have continued, while the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) confirmed they were investigating. Legal action organisation Reprieve described the threats against Abd el-Fattah as "alarming" and said nothing justified the move. “Suggesting that someone should be stripped of citizenship for something they posted on social media, however bad, is authoritarian overreach of the worst kind and a deeply dangerous step," Deputy Chief Executive Dan Dolan told Middle East Eye. 'Suggesting that someone should be stripped of citizenship for something they posted on social media, however bad, is authoritarian overreach of the worst kind' - Dan Dolan, Reprieve "In a country governed by the rule of law, politicians should not have the power to strip the legal rights of whomever they choose." Dolan added that the government's powers to target British citizens with dual nationality were fundamentally racist and threatened the rights of three in five non-white citizens. “That this alarming idea is even being suggested shows how extreme the UK’s citizenship stripping powers are, and how vague the ‘public good’ test [is]," he said. 'Shaken' by backlash In a statement on Monday, Abd el-Fattah responded to the controversy, saying he was "shaken" to be under attack 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. 'Should he be forced to return to Egypt, there is a very real risk that the authorities would once again silence him' - Ahmed Atalla, Egyptian Front for Human Rights "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 and were in fact sarcastic denunciations of them. Abd el-Fattah, who has often described himself as having " anarchist tendencies", was an outspoken secular socialist activist during the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations that saw mass protests on the streets of Egypt, which led to the ousting of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. He voiced his opinions mainly on Twitter and Facebook, interacting with the public using a largely anti-police, anti-state rhetoric, often advocating the killing or mass death penalty for police and army officers, judges and politicians , to the chagrin of successive governments. He has also advocated free speech, freedom of association, and campaigned against military rule and torture. Despite optimism and free and fair elections, in 2013 the Egyptian military overthrew the government of the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi and began a mass crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group, and on other anti-Sisi campaigners. UN panel rules Alaa Abd el-Fattah's detention illegal under international law Read More » Abd el-Fattah, who opposed both Morsi and Sisi, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2014 for protesting without permission, a sentence later reduced to five years. 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 levelled 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 after investigations found he no longer had any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In spite of this, the Egyptian authorities' reputation for arbitrary arrest and repression of critical speech means Abd el-Fattah could face serious threats to his life and liberty if he were forced to return to Egypt. "Should he be forced to return to Egypt, there is a very real risk that the authorities would once again silence him or fabricate new charges – following the well-established pattern used against political opponents, thus subjecting him to yet another cycle of arbitrary detention," said Ahmed Attalla, executive director of the Egyptian Front for Human Rights. Attalla told Middle East Eye that Abd el-Fattah's case was being "instrumentalised" by right-wing groups and pro-government media in Egypt, who were using it as justification to attack the activist. "We are concerned about the impact of this campaign on Alaa and his family psychologically," he said. "It also increases their vulnerability in the context of a rising far right in the UK and beyond, risks eroding the broad support Alaa has received from progressive political forces and government actors, and may threaten his legal status in the long term in an increasingly unstable global environment." MEE has twice contacted the UK Home Office to ask whether it was considering deporting Abd el-Fattah, but has received no response. Human Rights News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0