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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Rowena Mason Whitehall editor

Alaa Abd el-Fattah ‘will not be stripped of British citizenship’ over past tweets

Alaa Abd el-Fattah speaks on a mobile phone in Cairo after his release: he is in his mid-40s and has close-cropped dark hair and a beard, and is wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a yellow T-shirt. He stands in front of white wooden doors with glass and patterned panels and is smiling widely.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who was granted UK citizenship in 2021, arrived in the UK from Egypt on Boxing Day. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/AP

The Home Office will not strip the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his citizenship because his “abhorrent” past social media posts do not meet the legal bar for such a sanction, government sources have said.

Abd el-Fattah, who landed in London from Egypt on Boxing Day, has been at the centre of a political storm over social media posts he published more than a decade ago, including tweets in which he called for Zionists to be killed.

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