"Abd el-Fattah is an Egyptian pro-democracy campaigner who has been in and out of prison since 2006 for opposing the regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and for drawing attention to torture and other abuses. In 2021, he was granted British citizenship through a somewhat tenuous connection-his mother Laila was born in London while her mother was studying in the UK-which gave the British government greater standing to lobby Cairo on his behalf."
"That delight was short-lived. Within hours, Abd el-Fattah's tweets from the time of the Arab Spring, when he was around 30, resurfaced on X. In these, he reportedly wished violence on "all Zionists, including civilians"-read: Jews. He also called for the murder of police officers, and sarcastically described his dislike of white people. In a 2010 discussion of the death of one of the terrorists who tortured and killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, he declared, "My heroes have always killed colonialists.""
Alaa Abd el-Fattah is an Egyptian pro-democracy activist repeatedly imprisoned since 2006 for opposing authoritarian regimes and exposing abuses. He obtained British citizenship in 2021 via his mother's London birth, prompting successive UK governments to press Egypt for his release. The British government prioritized his case across Conservative and Labour administrations, and Egypt lifted a travel ban in December, enabling his return to the UK. Hours after his arrival, decades-old tweets resurfaced in which he wished violence on "all Zionists, including civilians," called for killing police officers, and made racist remarks, producing intense political backlash.
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