- - A political prisoner’s return to the UK was lauded by the government. Now ‘shocking’ tweets have sparked calls to deport him

Christian Edwards, CNNDecember 29, 2025 at 9:14 AM

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Alaa Abd El-Fattah was reunited with his family in Cairo after being released from an Egyptian prison in September. - Sayed Hassan/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing demands for a British-Egyptian human rights activist to be deported and his UK citizenship to be revoked after social media posts emerged in which he called for “Zionists” to be killed, prompting criticism of successive British governments that campaigned for his release from prison in Egypt.

Starmer said Friday that he was “delighted” that Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 44, had arrived in London after the Egyptian government lifted a travel ban that it had imposed on him following his September release from jail in the country, where he spent more than a decade as a political prisoner.

“I want to pay tribute to Alaa’s family, and to all those that have worked and campaigned for this moment,” Starmer said, adding that Abd El-Fattah’s case had been a “top priority” for his Labour government since it came to office in the summer of 2024.

But swiftly after Abd El-Fattah’s arrival in London, posts from around 2010 began to circulate in which he said the killing of “Zionists” is “heroic,” referred to British people as “dogs and monkeys,” called White people “a blight on the earth,” and said the police are “not human” and should be killed.

Abd El-Fattah has apologized for his “shocking and hurtful” tweets, which he said were “mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises” and sometimes part of regretful “online insult battles.” 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.

“I 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,” he said in a statement, adding that some of his posts had been “completely misunderstood, seemingly in bad faith.”

Opposition parties, the Conservatives and Reform UK, have both called on the government to revoke Abd El-Fattah’s British citizenship, which was granted to him in 2021 by the previous Conservative government.

“It 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,” Nigel Farage, the leader of right-wing Reform UK, said Sunday in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Although it is understood that Starmer was unaware of Abd El-Fattah’s 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.

“The government has since suggested the prime minister was unaware of those comments. Unfortunately, such an admission only compounds his ineptitude,” said Farage.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, pictured in Liverpool in September, has been criticized for lauding Abd El-Fattah's arrival in the UK. - Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Member of Parliament and the shadow minister for home affairs, also said she was not aware of Abd El-Fattah’s “grotesque” posts. “I 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,” she said.

Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, a polling firm, said that, absent a strong explanation from Labour, Abd El-Fattah’s case could become “a defining moment in public opinion,” crystallizing in the minds of some that the government lacks competence and has the wrong priorities.

Although Farage has leapt on Starmer’s 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.

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