Alaa Abd el-Fattah should not be in Britain

Once again, the British political establishment finds itself embroiled in an entirely avoidable controversy over immigration and national identity.

The man at the heart of the latest scandal is Egyptian-British national Alaa Abd el-Fattah. According to reports, 44-year-old Fattah is a human-rights campaigner who played a relatively prominent role in Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising. He was detained in Egypt in 2019 and eventually sentenced to prison on the grounds of ‘spreading fake news’ – a reference, reportedly, to social-media posts that described torture methods employed in Egyptian prisons.

After repeated lobbying on behalf of Fattah by the British government, he was pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in September. On Boxing Day, Keir Starmer said he was ‘delighted’ and ‘grateful’ for Fattah’s release and his return to the UK. He said Fattah’s case had been a ‘top priority for my government since we came to office’.

Starmer will now surely regret his enthusiasm. It’s now emerged that Fattah is a rather less savoury character than it may have first appeared, certainly if his social-media posts are any indication. Tweets dating as far back as 2010 have now been unearthed showing Fattah calling for the killing of ‘Zionists’, describing the British as ‘dogs and monkeys’ and calling for the murder of the police. He seemingly confessed to being a ‘racist’ because he ‘[doesn’t] like white people’.

He has since apologised for what he calls his ‘shocking and hurtful’ tweets. He claims they were ‘mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises’, and occasionally part of ‘online insult battles’. Many of his tweets were sent when Fattah was in his early 30s.

Fattah doesn’t seem to be the paragon of virtue that he has been portrayed as by many politicians, media outlets and the celebrities who backed the Free Alaa campaign. He has apparently given vent to racist and anti-Semitic views. Calling for the killing of ‘Zionists’ and seemingly admitting to hating ‘white people’ certainly won’t do much for social cohesion in the UK. This case is yet another reminder of the vast gulf that separates the interests of British citizens from the priorities of the government.

The Conservative Party and Reform UK have called for Fattah to be stripped of his citizenship and deported. This is not as far-fetched as it seems, given he only became a British citizen in 2021, under the previous Conservative government. His claims to citizenship at the time also seem to have been tenuous – he was actually born in Egypt to a mother who only happened to be born in London as Fattah’s grandmother was doing a PhD there at the time.

Starmer may plead ignorance – his office recently said that he had no idea about Fattah’s past statements on social media. But his views are hardly a secret. In 2014, Fattah’s nomination for the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was withdrawn because of the existence of these very posts.

This is not just down to Starmer’s administration. Successive UK governments should have looked into the social-media history of a prominent political activist before granting him British citizenship, campaigning hard to secure his release from a foreign prison and welcoming him into Britain with open arms. This is basic due diligence and should be part of a standard background check.

There is now significant political, media and public clamour for Starmer to do something about Fattah. But the PM has pretty much tied his hands. Of all the enormous u-turns he has mounted in government, deporting a man back to Egypt, after months of lobbying for his release from that same country, would surely take the biscuit.

The case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah is a catastrophic cock-up, which could have been easily avoided. Once again, our governing elites, cheered on by campaigning media and assorted luvvies, have been left with egg on their face. They have embarrassed themselves on the international stage by supporting a man who hates Britain and its people. The public have run out of patience with this most inept of governments.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.