Alaa Abdel-Fattah received a presidential pardon on September 22 and traveled to the UK after Egypt's public prosecution lifted a travel ban. The move followed years of diplomatic efforts by the UK to secure his release from detention in Egypt.

But after old social posts emerged of him calling for violence against Zionists and the police, the opposition conservatives called Sunday for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported to Egypt.

Posting on X Friday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had said he was "delighted" Abdel-Fattah had been reunited with his loved ones in the UK, after Egypt lifted its travel ban.

Now Starmer is facing calls to retract those comments over the content of the activist's posts, which date back to 2010.

A Foreign Office statement said Sunday: "Mr El-Fattah is a British citizen. It has been a long-standing priority under successive governments to work for his release from detention, and to see him reunited with his family in the UK.

"The Government condemns Mr El-Fattah's historic tweets and considers them to be abhorrent."

Shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick, of the opposition Conservatives, has called for El-Fattah to be stripped of his citizenship.

"If the Prime Minister really was unaware that El Fattah was an extremist, he should immediately retract his comments expressing 'delight' at his arrival and begin proceedings to revoke his citizenship and deport him," Jenrick said on X.

Abdel-Fattah, a dual British-Egyptian citizen and one of the most prominent figures of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, has faced multiple prosecutions over the past decade.

He was arrested in September 2019 and spent two years in pretrial detention before being sentenced in 2021 to five years in prison for spreading false news.

In July 2025, a Cairo court removed Abdel-Fattah and six others from Egypt’s terrorism list, where he had been placed in 2020 by a criminal court ruling.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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