is under growing political scrutiny after U.K. counterterrorism police started evaluating recently resurfaced social media posts by Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah—someone Prime Minister Starmer had openly welcomed back to the U.K. following his release from an Egyptian prison.
Abd El-Fattah was compelled to issue an apology this week over controversial posts from 2008 to 2014 that included comments supporting violence against “U.S. soldiers, Zionists and police.” The posts reappeared shortly after his return to the U.K., sparking political backlash and a counterterrorism review—including a tweet where he wrote: “From time to time I remind people that I rejoice when U.S. soldiers are killed, and support killing Zionists, even civilians.”
Abd El-Fattah on Boxing Day after being granted a pardon by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Starmer, who had publicly campaigned for his release and called the case a priority for his government, said he was “delighted” when Abd El-Fattah arrived in the country.
That welcome has since become a , though Starmer later denounced the historical posts as “absolutely abhorrent” and stated the government was “taking steps to examine the information failures in this case.”
A Counter Terrorism Policing spokesperson said authorities have received numerous public reports about Abd El-Fattah’s past posts, which are now being assessed by specialist officers in the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU), according to GB News.
GB News reported the posts under review include content where Abd El-Fattah is accused of describing the killing of Zionists as “heroic” and seeming to incite violence against police. One post reportedly stated, “We need to kill more of them.” Another is alleged to have read: “By the way I’m a racist, I don’t like white people so piss off.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper launched an urgent review into what she termed “serious information failures” in the case, noting neither she nor Starmer were briefed on the social media posts before Abd El-Fattah arrived in the U.K. Cooper said she “very much regrets” the and that it “exacerbated the distress felt by Jewish communities in the U.K.”
Speaking to Digital, Alan Mendoza—executive director of the Henry Jackson Society—criticized the government’s handling of the case, saying: “The is guilty of incompetence at the very least for having embraced an activist with such an obvious and appalling social media record.”
He continued: “The fact that el-Fattah’s public commentary was not checked by successive administrations—allowing him first to gain citizenship and consular support, then entry to the U.K.—shows how shambolic our institutions have become. There is nothing British about this man beyond a quirk of administration, and he should be stripped of his status immediately and deported on account of who he really is: an enemy of this state.”
Much of the material now under scrutiny dates to 2010–2012, a period when Abd El-Fattah was an active figure in Egypt’s protest movement—the same movement that paved the way for Mohamed Morsi, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, to seize power and become Egyptian president.
In his apology, Abd El-Fattah said the posts reflected “expressions of a young man’s anger and frustration in a time of regional crises”—including , Lebanon and Gaza—and rising police brutality in Egypt. He said he particularly regretted posts written during online disputes and acknowledged he “should have known better.”
Opposition lawmakers argue the episode exposes a broader failure of vetting and judgment. Conservative MP Robert Jenrick has dismissed the apology as “scripted and fake” and called for Abd El-Fattah’s , .
Reuters contributed to this report.