UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces calls to retract comments and deport activist Alaa Abdel Fattah over old social media posts calling for violence
LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced pressure on Sunday over “abhorrent” historic social media posts by a British-Egyptian activist whose return to the country he had recently welcomed.
Alaa Abdel Fattah returned to the UK days ago after years of diplomatic efforts to secure his release from detention in Egypt.
The emergence of old posts, dating back to 2010, in which he called for violence against Zionists and the police, prompted a political backlash.
The opposition Conservatives called for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported.
Shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick said Starmer should “immediately retract his comments expressing ‘delight’ at his arrival and begin proceedings to revoke his citizenship and deport him.”
A Foreign Office statement said the government condemned the historic tweets and considered them “abhorrent.”
It added that securing his release and reunion with family in the UK had been a long-standing priority under successive governments.
Starmer had posted on social media on Friday that he was “delighted” Abdel Fattah had been reunited with his loved ones after Egypt lifted a travel ban.
Abdel Fattah was a leading voice in Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising and was detained in 2019.
He was sentenced in December 2021 to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news.
His imprisonment was branded a breach of international law by UN investigators.
Abdel Fattah was released after being pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi earlier this year.
His mother had undertaken a long-running hunger strike as part of efforts to secure his release.
