Activist will keep British citizenship, say sources

The Home Office will not strip the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his citizenship because his “abhorrent” past social media posts do not meet the legal bar for such sanction, government sources have said.

- Rowena Mason Whitehall editor

Alaa Abd el-Fattah with his mother. Old social media posts he wrote have been called 'abhorrent'

Abd el-Fattah, who landed in London from Egypt on Boxing Day, has been at the centre of a political storm over social media posts from more than a decade ago, including one that called for Zionists to be killed.

Keir Starmer said that he was “delighted” by Abd el-Fattah’s arrival on Friday after the British government helped secure the activist’s release from years in an Egyptian jail. However, the prime minister has since condemned the tweets and said he was unaware of them.

Yvette Cooper also launched a review looking into “serious information failures” around the case after successive Tory and Labour governments lobbied for Abd el-Fattah’s release as a political prisoner.

The activist, who was granted British citizenship while in prison in 2021 through his mother's birth in the UK, has apologised "unequivocally" for his posts after opposition parties called for him to be deported and his citizenship revoked.

Human rights campaigners have reacted with anger, saying that stripping citizenship as a punishment for social media posts would be an "extremely authoritarian step".

Yesterday the activist faced fresh criticism from the Conservatives after his official Facebook account appeared recently to have liked a social media post suggesting "Zionists against Alaa Abd el-Fattah" were behind a "campaign" against him.