Government to review 'information failures' in British-Egyptian activist case

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has launched an inquiry into serious information gaps in the case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah's case. Cooper said in a letter to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that she, Sir Keir Starmer, and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy weren't aware of Mr Abd El Fattah's historical tweets, which they regard as

abhorrent. It comes after the Conservative and Reform UK called for the activist to be barred from UK citizenship and deported after social media messages in which he called for Zionists to be killed. Mr Abd El Fattah has apologized, saying he understood

how shocking and hurtful" the messages were, according to him.

Sir Keir Starmer has been chastised for claiming he was delighted by Mr Abd El Fattah's arrival in the United Kingdom on Friday, three months after the democracy protester was released from Egypt's jail. Sir Keir said the resurfaced tweets were completely abhorrent and that the government was

taking steps to investigate the information leaks in this case.

I know this has contributed to the hysteria of many in the Jewish community in the United Kingdom with the rise of antisemitism and recent horrific attacks,

he said. Robert Jenrick, the Conservative shadow justice minister who sparked Sir Keir's reception for Mr Abd El Fattah, responded quickly by reiting his call for the activist to be barred from the country. Reform UK said on Monday evening that it would change the legislation so that Mr Abd El Fattah could be barred from his British citizenship and deported. Former Conservative and Labour governments had

opened our doors to evil people," Nigel Farage, the party's leader, said.

Cooper said in a letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee that work had started over the weekend that senior foreign secretaries and prime ministers had made public statements about Mr Abd El Fattah's case

without all relevant facts. Current and former ministers were

never briefed on these tweets when they spoke out about the matter,

she said, and the civil servants in charge of the investigation were

also unaware

of them. Cooper said that it was clear that there had been an

unacceptable loss

and that long-running due diligence procedures had been

completely inadequate for this situation. I'm deeply concerned about Mr Abd El Fattah's return to the UK's Jewish people, and she and other government officials expressed her displeasure with his tweets, according to the foreign minister,

added to the sadness felt by Jewish groups in the UK, and I greatly regret that. She told the committee that she had requested the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office to investigate the

serious information gaps

in this instance and the wider policies in place in the department for conducting due diligence on high-profile consular and human rights cases to ensure they were functioning properly and that

all necessary lessons were learned. Lord Ricketts, the former head of the UK Foreign Office, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think where the inquiry should look at is, is where ministers are going to be involved, and where officials are going out to ask ministers to advocate on behalf of dual nationals.

Mr Abd El Fattah says, I am a bigote, I don't like white people in a resurfaced tweet from 2012. In another, he seems to say that

killing any colonialists and especially Zionists is heroic

; we need to kill more of them. He is also accused of saying that police have no rights and that we should kill them all. Mr Abd El Fattahunequivocally

apologised for the tweets earlier Monday. Although arguing that some of the posts had been

completely twisted out of their meaning,he said he took antisemitismvery seriously. I am shocked that, he wrote, I'm shocked because, just as I am being reunited with my family for the first time in ten years, many classic tweets of mine have been republished and used to challenge and attack my character and values, fueling calls for the revocation of my citizenship. Mona Seif, Mr Abd El Fattah's sister, described the situation as a never ending nightmare.There's something so tragic and infuriating about this vile campaign against him and our families, with people portraying him as something entirely contrary to who he really is, and even though he paid a high price for his convictions.

Mr Abd El Fattah's release had been

a long-standing priority under successive governments,

according to the Foreign Office, who said it had been

a longstanding concern under successive administrations Following a trial that human rights organizations said was grossly unfair, the 44-year-old was found guilty in 2021 of

spreading fake news

in Egypt for posting a Facebook post about torture in the region. He was granted British citizenship in December 2021 by his London-born mother, who was among the Conservative Party's in control at the time. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, who was an immigrant minister until September 2021, said he was unaware of Mr Abd El Fattah's tweets at the time, but he now believes the protester

should have his citizenship withdrawn. On Monday, Philp told the Today programme,

There is no excuse for what he wrote. Dame Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair, accused Philp of

throwing laws that were not based in lawon the same platform.He [Mr Abd El Fattah] is a British citizen,she said.He was entitled to British citizenship, although he denied it,

he said, so he is a British citizen. The British government has been trying to get him back to the country and out of prison.

And if authorities had been aware of Mr Abd El Fatteh's previous social media messages, he arrived in the country as a British citizen and there were no legal avenues to block his entry,

a government official said. Downing Street is reported that there is a strong bar to anyone losing their citizenship because they must have either obtained citizenship by fraud or be deemed to pose a significant national security risk, a test that is unlikely to be administered in this situation.

We welcome the return of a British citizen unfairly detained abroad,the PM's official spokesperson said on Monday,We applaud the release of he innocently detention in all cases and as we have in the past.

That said, it doesn't change the fact that we have slammed the content of these historic tweets, and we find them to be abhorrent, and it's been very clear about it.

Mr Abd El Fattah, a writer and software programmer, came to fame during a 2011 revolt that compelled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign, prompting him to ren He has spent more than a decade of his life in jail and was released in September after a long campaign by his family and lobbying by the British government. In an interview with the BBC from Cairo in October, he said he was "learning how to get back to life.