\n \u201cI want to pay tribute to Alaa\u2019s family, and to all those that have worked and campaigned for this moment,\u201d Starmer said, adding that Abd El-Fattah\u2019s case had been a \u201ctop priority\u201d for his Labour government since it came to office in the summer of 2024.\n <\/p>\n
\n But swiftly after Abd El-Fattah\u2019s arrival in London, posts from around 2010 began to circulate in which he said the killing of \u201cZionists\u201d is \u201cheroic,\u201d referred to British people as \u201cdogs and monkeys,\u201d called White people \u201ca blight on the earth,\u201d and said the police are \u201cnot human\u201d and should be killed.\n <\/p>\n
\n Abd El-Fattah has apologized for his \u201cshocking and hurtful\u201d tweets, which he said were \u201cmostly expressions of a young man\u2019s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises\u201d and sometimes part of regretful \u201conline insult battles.\u201d The activist said that in the real world, he had consistently fought for equality and democracy and been stripped of his freedom as a result.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI 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,\u201d he said in a statement, adding that some of his posts had been \u201ccompletely misunderstood, seemingly in bad faith.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Opposition parties, the Conservatives and Reform UK, have both called on the government to revoke Abd El-Fattah\u2019s British citizenship, which was granted to him in 2021 by the previous Conservative government.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt should go without saying that anyone who possesses racist and anti-British views such as those of (Abd El-Fattah) should not be allowed into the UK,\u201d Nigel Farage, the leader of right-wing Reform UK, said Sunday in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.\n <\/p>\n
\n Although it is understood that Starmer was unaware of Abd El-Fattah\u2019s messages when he championed his arrival in the UK, questions have been raised about how they could have gone unnoticed by the right-of-center Conservative government that granted him citizenship and the Labour government that pushed for his release by Egypt.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe government has since suggested the prime minister was unaware of those comments. Unfortunately, such an admission only compounds his ineptitude,\u201d said Farage.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-2237888566.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Member of Parliament and the shadow minister for home affairs, also said she was not aware of Abd El-Fattah\u2019s \u201cgrotesque\u201d posts. \u201cI trusted the process to give Alaa citizenship, and then supported the campaign for his release. I feel deeply let down, and frankly betrayed, having lent my support to his cause which I now regret,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, a polling firm, said that, absent a strong explanation from Labour, Abd El-Fattah\u2019s case could become \u201ca defining moment in public opinion,\u201d crystallizing in the minds of some that the government lacks competence and has the wrong priorities.\n <\/p>\n
\n Although Farage has leapt on Starmer\u2019s perceived blunder, some have accused the Reform UK leader of hypocrisy, since he has long criticized Labour for what he has described as heavy-handed policing of social media posts.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing demands for a British-Egyptian human rights activist to be deported…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":477891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-477890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115803535835654045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}