UK MPs dig up decade-old tweets to demand rights activist lose citizenship

Egyptian-British human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has “unequivocally” apologized after decades-old tweets from right-wing extremists demanded that he be denied British citizenship.

The writer and blogger, who returned to Britain this week after 12 years of imprisonment in Egypt, wrote a lengthy apology online, adding that some of the tweets were “completely twisted”.

Right-wing commentators and members of the Conservative Party demanded that Abd El-Fattah be deported for his posts dating back to 2010, including alleged references to killing Zionists and police officers, along with far-right Reform UK leaders.

Abd El-Fattah wrote that the tweets “reflected a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises,” including the wars on Iraq and Gaza, and a pervasive culture of “online insult battles.”

He continued, “I should have known better.”

I’m shocked that several of my older tweets have been republished and used to question and denigrate my integrity and values, leading to calls for the revocation of my citizenship, he said.

In a Daily Mail op-ed, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood should consider how Abd El-Fattah “can be removed from Britain” and that she does not want “people who hate Britain coming to our country.”

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, criticized Badenoch for being a member of the 2021 administration, which granted Abd El-Fattah citizenship, in a letter he wrote to Mahmood on X.

Abd El-Fattah’s supporters and human rights activists blasted the actions as smear campaigns and directed his followers to his apology.

Naomi Klein, a Jewish academic and author, claimed that right-wingers were “playing politics with his hard-won freedom,” while Mai El-Sadany, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Tahrir Institute for Middle Eastern Policy, claimed the citizenship revocation campaign was “coordinated” to “impugn his reputation and harm him.

The home secretary can revoke citizenship under British law if it is deemed to be “conductive to the public good,” a practice that critics claim is unfairly targeted at British Muslims.

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion predicted that at least 175 people had lost their British citizenship since 2006, including more than 100 in 2017, making the country “a global leader in the race to the bottom” for revocations in a report released in 2022.

British conservatives’ concern over Abd El-Fattah’s release appeared to be caused by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response. He stated earlier this week that the investigation had been “top priority” and that he was “delighted” by Abd El-Fattah’s return, a statement that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper shared.

During the 2011 mass protests that ousted then-leader Hosni Mubarak, Abd El-Fattah was imprisoned. He then became a prominent critic of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the military ruler of Egypt, two years after his ouster.

In 2014, the author was accused of spreading fake news and received a 15-year prison sentence. Before receiving another five-year sentence, he was briefly released in 2019.