The 44-year-old Egyptian-British political activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah has been facing fierce attacks over the last two weeks in Britain over statements he made some years ago against Zionism and British colonial history.
The attacks started days after his arrival in London from Egypt where he had spent years behind bars. He was pardoned by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi on 22 September and his name taken off the list of those banned from travelling abroad two weeks ago.
Abdel-Fattah arrived in London on 26 December, having obtained British citizenship in 2021 through his mother. His arrival was first hailed by many as a human rights and diplomatic victory after a decade of imprisonment in Egypt, but his presence in Britain then turned into a political storm.
British newspapers published articles about posts he wrote between 2008 and 2014 on the former Twitter platform (now X) and Facebook against “Zionists”, the police, and British colonialists.
British counter-terrorism police said they are assessing the posts following reports from the public.
In response, Abdel-Fattah apologised “unequivocally” for the posts, which he described as “shocking and offensive”, explaining that at the time they were issued he was an “angry young man” affected by regional crises such as the wars in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.
Some of the posts were “completely distorted” in the reports, he said.
“Looking back at those tweets, the ones that weren’t completely taken out of context, I truly understand how shocking and hurtful they were, and that’s why I sincerely apologise for them,” Abdel-Fattah said.
However, his apology fell on largely deaf ears in Britain.
UK newspaper The Guardian and the BBC described Abdel-Fattah’s apology as “unequivocal”, but Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Robert Jenrick said that Abdel-Fattah’s social media comments showed that he had “extremist views that are completely incompatible with British values”.
He should “be made to live in Egypt or frankly anywhere else in the world except the UK,” he said.
Jenrick wrote on the X platform that “at the same time that Alaa Abdel-Fattah is offering an unequivocal apology, on his Arabic Facebook page he is still claiming that he is merely a victim of a ‘Zionist campaign’. Get this disgusting man out” of Britain, he said.
The BBC deplored the fact that within hours of his apology Abdel-Fattah’s Facebook account said criticism of him was part of a “relentless smear campaign” being waged by “the richest man in the world, a couple of Middle East intelligence services, and a few Zionist organisations”.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform Party in the UK, has called for Abdel-Fattah to be deported from Britain. Farage criticised the previous Conservative and Labour Party governments of “opening our doors to evil people”, adding that he would change the law to strip Abdel-Fattah of his British citizenship and have him deported were he to be elected to office.
Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, said the British government should consider the possibility of deporting Abdel-Fattah over what she said were his anti-Semitic statements.
The Conservatives, Reform UK, and some senior Labour MPs have called for Abdel-Fattah to be stripped of his British citizenship as a result of the posts.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, a Jewish organisation, said Abdel-Fattah’s posts raise “grave concerns” and show that the British authorities are not investigating applicants for UK citizenship appropriately.
Adrian Cohen, the board’s senior vice president, said that “Abdel-Fattah’s previous extremist and violent rhetoric aimed at ‘Zionists’ and white people in general is threatening to British Jews and the wider public.”
The British media said that in August 2011 Abdel-Fattah had encouraged attacks on British police and targeting sites in London, against the backdrop of riots that broke out after the killing of a man, Mark Duggan, by police in Tottenham in London, which later turned into clashes that spread to several English cities.
Another post from November 2010 included a call to kill those Abdel-Fattah described as “Zionists”.
Other tweets attributed to Abdel-Fattah dating back to 2010 included an attack on Britain’s colonial history and institutions, accusing them of committing massacres and enslaving peoples.
After the images of the posts attributed to Abdel-Fattah spread, demands to revoke his citizenship and deport him intensified, with Badenoch calling for Abdel-Fattah’s deportation, saying “I don’t want people who hate Britain coming to our country.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at first welcomed Abdel-Fattah’s arrival in London, considering his case an “absolute priority”. However, he told the BBC on Sunday that he now regrets welcoming Abdel-Fattah to the UK, following the emergence of his social media posts which included calls to kill Zionists.
Starmer called the posts “abhorrent” and said he “should have been made aware of [them] and I wasn’t.” He added that “as I’ve made clear, I didn’t know about those comments at the time of welcoming Abdel-Fattah to this country.”
Starmer indicated that “it’s a failing within the system; it shouldn’t have happened, and I wasn’t very pleased about it when I found out, hence we’re taking remedial action.”
In one of the posts, Abdel-Fattah said he considers “killing any colonialists and specially Zionists a heroic act, and we need to kill more of them.” In another, he said “I am a racist. I don’t like white people.” In a third, he said the police should not have rights, and “we should kill them all.”
A report by the BBC on 4 January said Abdel-Fattah was granted UK citizenship in December 2021 through his London-born mother when the Conservatives led by former UK prime minister Boris Johnson were in power and Priti Patel was home secretary.
The report said that “stripping a person of his British citizenship has typically only been done in cases linked to terrorism or serious organised crime where someone is deemed a national security threat.”
Abdel-Fattah’s apology has also led to attacks on him in Egypt, with TV talk show hosts and political commentators attacking Abdel-Fattah for his quick apology “to please the British” and his refusal to apologise for his “crimes in Egypt in the same way”.
Egyptian MP and journalist Mustafa Bakri launched an attack on Abdel-Fattah, describing him as a “terrorist and a conspirator.”
Bakri wrote in a post on his X account that “the terrorist Alaa Abdel-Fattah apologises to the Jews and homosexuals for the insults he directed at them and says that he ‘paid the price’ for defending homosexuals. So why didn’t he apologise to the Egyptians whom he insulted, and to their institutions, their great army, their valiant police, and their honourable judiciary?”
“This is a person who sells out for profit, citizenship, and tainted money. We are not asking for an apology from a conspirator, but here I am wondering about the position of the Muslim Brotherhood, which declares its support for this criminal, and about the position of the Egyptian government, which should have revoked the citizenship of this terrorist, the lover of homosexuals.”
“In response to the British storm against Alaa Abdel-Fattah, he came out to announce his apology for his previous writings in which he was accused of calling for violence and hatred, and he says he was an angry young man. The British have finally realised that the one they considered a defender of freedom, and an innocent prisoner, is nothing but a hostile and sick personality.”
“Anyone who is hostile to the homeland ends up either insane or in disgrace... Lies have a short lifespan, and in the end only the truth prevails.”
TV talk show hosts Ahmed Moussa and Nashaat Al-Dihi said they were happy that the British media had at last been able to expose the truth about the “terrorist” Alaa Abdel-Fattah and that he and his sister Mona were using social media to incite violence against the British authorities in the same way they did in Egypt.
Mohamed Al-Sayed Saleh, a political commentator, deplored the fact that the British media, which had called for Abdel-Fattah’s release, attacked him because his comments were anti-Semitic and incited violence against the police.
“This attack shows again the double standards of the West, which turned a blind eye when Abdel-Fattah was inciting violence against the Egyptian police,” Saleh said, calling upon Abdel-Fattah to issue an apology to the Egyptian police and army.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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