{"id":13011,"date":"2025-12-29T19:19:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T19:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/egypts-former-political-prisoner-says-sorry-for-hurtful-old-social-media-posts-as-uk-critics-push-for-deportation\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T19:19:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T19:19:18","slug":"egypts-former-political-prisoner-says-sorry-for-hurtful-old-social-media-posts-as-uk-critics-push-for-deportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/egypts-former-political-prisoner-says-sorry-for-hurtful-old-social-media-posts-as-uk-critics-push-for-deportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s former political prisoner says sorry for \u2018hurtful\u2019 old social media posts as UK critics push for deportation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>LONDON, Dec 29 &mdash; Activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, freed from prison in Egypt and now in Britain, apologised &#8203;on Monday for his &ldquo;shocking and hurtful&rdquo; social media posts &zwnj;made more than a decade ago, which have led to calls for his deportation from opposition British politicians.<\/p>\n<p>Abd el-Fattah, &zwj;44, became Egypt&rsquo;s most prominent political prisoner after spending much of &zwnj;his adult life in and out of detention due to his activism and was a rare symbol of opposition during a far-reaching crackdown under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.<\/p>\n<p>He arrived &zwj;in Britain last Friday after obtaining British citizenship in 2021 through his mother, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he was &ldquo;delighted&rdquo; by the news.<\/p>\n<p>In the following days, British newspapers ran stories about posts made by Fattah on the former Twitter platform between 2008 and 2014, seen by Reuters, which endorsed violence against &ldquo;Zionists&rdquo; and police.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, Abd el-Fattah said many of his tweets had been misunderstood but that others were unacceptable.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Looking at the &zwj;tweets now &ndash; &zwj;the ones that were not completely twisted out of their meaning &ndash; I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologise,&rdquo; &#8203;Fattah said.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>&ldquo;They were mostly expressions of a young man&rsquo;s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises &ndash; the wars on Iraq, on Lebanon and Gaza &ndash; and the rise of police brutality against Egyptian youth.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform UK party which currently tops opinion &zwnj;polls, called for Abd el-Fattah&rsquo;s deportation from Britain. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said the country should consider it.<\/p>\n<p>The &zwj;Board of Deputies of British Jews said his posts were of &ldquo;profound concern&rdquo; &zwnj;and showed &zwj;a lack of due diligence among British authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Britain&rsquo;s foreign office said it condemned &zwj;Abd el-Fattah&rsquo;s historic tweets and called them &ldquo;abhorrent&rdquo;, in a statement published on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Abd el-Fattah &zwj;was most recently serving a five-year sentence in Egypt &#8288;imposed in December 2021, &zwj;after he shared a social media post about a prisoner&rsquo;s death. &mdash; Reuters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Egypt&rsquo;s former political prisoner says sorry for &lsquo;hurtful&rsquo; old social media posts as UK critics push for deportation<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON, Dec 29 &mdash; Activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, freed from prison in Egypt and now in Britain, apologised &#8203;on Monday for his &ldquo;shocking and hurtful&rdquo; social media posts &zwnj;made more than a decade ago, which have led to calls for his deportation from opposition British politicians. Abd el-Fattah, &zwj;44, became Egypt&rsquo;s most prominent political prisoner&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/egypts-former-political-prisoner-says-sorry-for-hurtful-old-social-media-posts-as-uk-critics-push-for-deportation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Egypt\u2019s former political prisoner says sorry for \u2018hurtful\u2019 old social media posts as UK critics push for deportation&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}