Dec. 29 (UPI) — A political prisoner freed from an Egyptian prison and brought home to the Britain is facing strong criticism for tweets he made about 10 years ago, for which he apologized.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, 44, arrived in London on Friday after the British government negotiated his release. He said he apologized “unequivocally” for the tweets, which he alleges were taken out of context. Several politicians in the opposition parties have called for el-Fattah to lose his British citizenship.
Previous British governments led by Conservative and Labour parties have lobbied for his release for 10 years. He was imprisoned in Egypt for his political beliefs, including criticism for how the country treated dissidents.
El-Fattah was convicted in 2021 of “spreading fake news” in Egypt for sharing a Facebook post about torture in the country. Human rights groups called the trial unfair.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was delighted by el-Fattah’s arrival. But then the news of the tweets emerged, bringing strong criticism.
Starmer’s spokesperson said, “We welcome the return of a British citizen unfairly detained abroad, as we would in all cases and as we have done in the past. That is central to Britain’s commitment to religious and political freedom. It doesn’t change the fact that we have condemned the nature of these historic tweets, and we consider them to be abhorrent.”
In a tweet from 2010, el-Fattah said he believed “killing any colonialists and specially Zionists heroic, we need to kill more of them.” In 2012 he tweeted, “I am a racist, I don’t like white people.” He is also accused of saying that police did not have rights and “we should kill them all.”
El-Fattah issued an apology Monday, saying he understood “how shocking and hurtful” his tweets 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,” he said. “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 that he took “accusations of antisemitism very seriously,” adding, “I have always believed that sectarianism and racism are the most sinister and dangerous of forces, and I did my part and paid the price for standing up for the rights of religious minorities in Egypt.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the BBC that he is now clear in his mind that “this man should have his citizenship revoked.”
“There is no excuse for that kind of language,” Philp said on Monday. “People who express that kind of hatred, that kind of anti-white racism, that kind of extremism who seek to incite violence, have no place in the United Kingdom.”
Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs committee, said “The bottom and top of it is that he [el-Fattah] is a British citizen,” she said.
“He was entitled to British citizenship; he claimed it, so he is a British citizen. The British government has been doing their utmost to get him back into the country and out of jail.”
Adrian Cohen, senior vice president of the board of deputies of British Jews, said in a statement, “[El-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 cross-party campaign for such a person, and the warm welcome issued by the government, demonstrate a broken system with an astonishing lack of due diligence by the authorities.”
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