Granted UK citizenship in 2021, Mr Abd El-Fattah is facing calls for his deportation, or even for his citizenship to be revoked.
The British-Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah (centre) at home after his release in September
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But who is Alaa Abd El-Fattah? Why was he in prison in Egypt, and what is he accused of saying? And can the UK strip someone’s citizenship?
Who is Alaa Abd El-Fattah?
Alaa Abd El-Fattah was a leading voice in Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising and went on hunger strikes behind bars.
He has been questioned, arrested, and detained on several occasions, spending most of his time since 2011 in prison.
Born in 1981, he was raised in a family of well known political activists, with both of his parents members of a small, vocal group of Egyptian intellectuals who had long spoken out against oppressive governments.
Mr Abd el-Fattah’s first taste of activism came in 2005, when he broke his arm protecting his mother and other women during protests against alleged election-rigging by the government of Hosni Mubarak.
By 2011, when people across the Middle East rose up against their leaders in the Arab spring, Mr Abd el-Fattah was one of the leaders of Egypt’s revolution, and he also challenged the interim military regime after Mubarak was deposed.
Why was he in prison in Egypt?
He was most recently detained in September 2019 by the National Security Agency and taken to State Security Prosecution on unknown charges.
He was later convicted of spreading false news and jailed in December 2021.
Despite his family’s claims that his sentence should have ended in September 2024, the Egyptian authorities refused to free him, stating that his release date had been pushed to January 2027.
The UN branded his imprisonment a breach of international law, and both Conservative and Labour governments lobbied for his release.
Following hunger strikes by Mr Abd El-Fattah and his mother, who was protesting for his release, he was released from prison on 22 September 2025.
Dual-national Alaa Abd El-Fattah was recently released from years of detention in Egypt (PA)
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He was pardoned along with five other prisoners by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
On Boxing Day, following the lifting of a travel ban, Mr Abd El-Fattah flew to the UK to reunite with his young son, who lives in Brighton.
Upon his arrival in the UK, Mr Abd El-Fattah has become the subject of controversy over his past social media posts.
Messages have resurfaced which appear to show him calling for Zionists and police to be killed.
In a tweet from 2012, he appears to say: “I am a racist, I don’t like white people”, while in another he says that police do not have rights and “we should kill them all”.
In another post, he says he considers “killing any colonialists and specially Zionists heroic, we need to kill more of them”.
Now, Mr Abd El-Fattah has apologised “unequivocally” for his past words.
He said: “I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologise.
“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 added: “They were mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises, and the rise of police brutality against Egyptian youth.
“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.”
What have the politicians said?
Sir Keir Starmer originally welcomed Mr Abd El-Fattah’s return to Britain, although No10 has said he was unaware of the historical messages at the time.
Starmer had lobbied for Mr Abd El-Fattah’s release, stating that the case had been a top priority for his government upon taking office.
The Foreign Office said that while it had been a long-standing priority under successive governments to work for his release, they condemned his posts as abhorrent.
Both Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to look at whether Mr Abd El-Fattah’s citizenship could be revoked.
Badenoch called the reported comments anti-British, and said that citizenship decisions must take account of social media activity, public statements, and patterns of belief.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch described Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s comments as ‘disgusting and vile’ (Ben Whitley/PA)
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Ms Badenoch said: “It is one thing to work for someone’s release from prison if they’ve been treated unfairly as previous governments did. It is quite another to elevate them, publicly and uncritically, into a moral hero.”
Mr Farage said in a letter to Mahmood: “It should go without saying that anyone who possesses racist and anti-British views such as those of Mr El-Fattah should not be allowed into the UK.
He also said it was astonishing that MPs from successive governments failed to carry out “basic due diligence” on Mr Abd El-Fattah while campaigning for his release.
Can the UK strip someone’s citizenship?
Mr Abd El-Fattah was granted UK citizenship in December 2021 under Boris Johnson through his mother, who was born in London.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, who was immigration minister at the time, has said he did not know of the messages in 2021, but that he was now clear that “this man should have his citizenship revoked”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Philp said: “There is no excuse for that kind of language.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Mr Abd El-Fattah’s apology was ‘insincere’ (Lucy North/PA)
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“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.”
However, Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said that the idea of revoking his citizenship was not based in law.
“The bottom and top of it is that he is a British citizen,” she said
As per the British Nationality Act 1981, the Home Secretary has the power to take away a person’s British citizenship if they consider it conducive to the public good, or if the person obtained their citizenship by fraud.
Depriving someone of their British citizenship for the public good is generally used in the context of national security or counter-terrorism.
The aim is to prevent a person who poses a threat to the UK from returning to the country, which they would otherwise have a right to do as a British citizen.
Shamima Begum had her citizenship revoked on national security grounds when she joined ISIS, preventing her return to the UK.
For people who have naturalised as British, citizenship deprivation is permitted even if it would leave them stateless – however, the UK has responsibilities under international law to avoid leaving people stateless, and British citizenship can only be stripped from someone eligible to apply for citizenship in another country.