What did Alaa Abd el-Fattah say in past social media posts and why is there a backlash? | UK news

What did Abd el-Fattah say and when?

Most of the social media posts in question were written on X between 2010 and 2012 during the Arab spring, when the British-Egyptian democracy activist was turning 30. The tweets appeared to show Abd el-Fattah calling for violence against Zionists and the police.

In the posts, most of which appear to have been deleted and could not immediately be verified, he described the killing of Zionists as heroic, adding “we need to kill more of them”. In 2011 he is accused of saying police “don’t have rights, we should just kill them all”. He also once described British people as dogs and monkeys.

Screenshots posted online appear to show that on 8 August 2011, during the London riots, he posted: “Go burn the city or downing street or hunt police u fools.” A year later he appeared to post: “By the way I’m a racist, I don’t like white people so piss off.”

What has he said since?

In a lengthy statement issued in the early hours of Monday, Abd el-Fattah apologised, saying he understood “how shocking and hurtful” his past comments were.

“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. I particularly regret some that were written as part of online insult battles with the total disregard for how they read to other people. I should have known better,” he said.

Some of the tweets had been “completely misunderstood, seemingly in bad faith” and “twisted out of their meaning”, he said.

Did politicians know about the posts?

A No 10 source said Keir Starmer, his deputy and the foreign secretary were unaware of Abd el-Fattah’s past comments, which the government condemned as “abhorrent”.

Conservatives MPs such as the former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Alicia Kearns, a former chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said they too were unaware of Abd el-Fattah’s posts and that they regretted lobbying for his release.

Yet this isn’t the first time Abd el-Fattah’s comments on social media have provoked controversy. In 2014, his tweets cost him a nomination for the European parliament’s Sakharov prize. The group backing him withdrew the nomination for the human rights award, saying they had discovered a tweet from 2012 in which he called for the murder of Israelis. In 2015, Abd el-Fattah claimed his comments had been taken out of context.

Since then successive Conservative and Labour governments had campaigned for his release from an Egyptian jail, recognising he had been unfairly detained.

Who has called for Abd el-Fattah’s citizenship to be revoked?

Senior Conservatives and Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, have called for Abd el-Fattah to be stripped of his British citizenship and deported. Abd el-Fattah was granted British citizenship in 2021 by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government under an immigration law that allows mothers to transmit their UK citizenship to their children, even if they are outside Britain.

On Monday, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, should look at whether Abd el-Fattah’s “citizenship can be revoked and he can be removed from Britain”.

The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that Mahmood should sign an order to revoke his citizenship “under the 1971 Immigration Act on the grounds he’s not conducive to the public good”.

But Emily Thornberry, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Philp’s ideas were “not based in law”.

“The Immigration Act, section six, specifically says that that doesn’t apply to Brits,” she said in response to Philp’s comments. “The law is you can’t take away people’s citizenship willy nilly in this way. You could only take away someone’s citizenship if they have dual nationality, if they’re a threat to national security. I really don’t think that Chris Philp is going to be able to tell us of an example of someone who sent a tweet 15 years ago and that being seen as a threat to national security.”

Are the police involved?

On Sunday, Farage said he had reported Abd el-Fattah to counter-terrorism police.

A counter-terrorism policing spokesperson said on Monday: “We have received a number of public referrals in recent days relating to various historical social media posts. As with all such referrals, the posts are now in the process of being assessed by specialist officers within the counter-terrorism internet referral unit (CTIRU).

“Should any potential offences be identified, then, depending on the nature of the offences, the CTIRU will either refer the matter to the relevant investigation team within counter-terrorism policing, or to the relevant local police force to consider for further investigation.”