To think that Kier Starmer shouldn't be welcoming extremists into Britain?

[Twiglets1]

Reported in The Telegraph today that Sir Keir Starmer has welcomed an alleged Islamist extremist, who labelled British people “dogs and monkeys” and called for Zionists to be killed, into the UK.

The Prime Minister said he was “delighted” that Alaa Abd el-Fattah had arrived from Egypt on Friday evening after a travel ban imposed by Cairo was lifted following lobbying by ministers.

Mr Abd el-Fattah, an activist with dual British-Egyptian citizenship, previously said that it was heroic to kill Zionists “including civilians”. He urged Londoners to burn Downing Street, told his supporters to kill police and said he hated white people.

Ministers are facing calls to revoke his British citizenship, which he was granted in 2021 while imprisoned in Egypt, where campaigners described him as a “prisoner of conscience”.

Sir Keir’s tweet yesterday said how “delighted” he was that Alaa Abd El-Fattah is back in this country. Does that seem a reasonable stance to take for someone who has claimed at the same time to be committed to "eradicating antisemitism in the UK"?

@AlecTrevelyan006 Terrifying. And frustrating that this has just been allowed to happen and keep escalating.

My local Jewish community has, since the terrorist attack, started implementing rules about not wearing school uniforms outside school, and advising people not to wear anything revealing their religion/ethnicity outside. One school stopped after school clubs and now use a bus service to keep the children safe, and also because there was a period of buses refusing to stop for Jewish children (one video shows all the passengers cheering when this happened), but it was still attacked by adults who ran onto the bus and screamed 'Free Palestine' at the primary school children. The attitude of most people I've talked to is not really anger but resignation, and a sense of 'we knew it would happen again.'

That is sad. I wonder if anyone here would learn from that.

I see Naomi Klein has been wheeled out in the Guardian today to explain how missunderstood this individual is...

Looks like @AlecTrevelyan006 was right, no shortage of friends and supporters in certain circles...

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/31/alaa-abd-el-fattah-tweets-british-right-citizenship

Par for the course with the Guardian. 😡

Lucy Connelly was convicted & sentenced by a UK court whereas this guy hasn't even been charged. He was entitled to a UK passport as his mother is a British citizen. As a British citizen he can neither be denied entry to the UK nor deported from the UK once here.

Added to which she pleaded guilty.

I know that the "riot posts" were inflammatory because those making them were convicted by a UK court.

Farage has reported the tweets to the police. So maybe wait and see what happens?

As for Connolly...she is a nasty, nasty woman who got what she deserved. The vileness of el-Fattah doesn't change or diminish that. She is happily using his vileness to play the victim, though.

I didn't vote because it's pointless debating about Starmer falling into this bear trap left by the Tories. If he had been made aware of the offensive tweets made 10-15 years ago he would not have bigged up this guy's arrival in the UK. It's disingenuous to pretend that Starmer knew about the tweets any more than every other politician who has been lobbying for his release knew about them.

The question remains as to why nobody supposedly knew. MI5 and/or MI6 must have been aware of el-Fattah as he was a political dissident (albeit in Egypt) and had a British born mother.
IMO someone will have briefed the Home Office and/or a Home Secretary (we've had a number over the past few years) but the persistent and successful PR and lobbying by his family is what was listened to.

begs the question, why didn’t any politicians google him, get a bit of a research given to them on the man they were enthusiastically campaigning for? This has been known for many years, hence the revoking of his Sakharov award, incompetence or just an undercurrent of Jews don’t count or both.

Exactly this. There has to have been some knowledge about him as he was a prominent political dissident. At least one, if not more, Home Secretary would have been made aware of him by intelligence services. Now we are stuck with him.

These actions are appalling. Screaming and spitting 'free Palestine' at Jewish children on a school bus. Anyone doing that should be arrested for hatred, those poor children. Sadly, some of the 'free P' brigade often dont think further that the shouting or chanting. Actions are moronic.

Has a single pro-Pali protestor been arrested and convicted of hate speech/hate crime?

A vast number of the Free Palestine lot are simply antisemitic thugs who want to feel like righteous rebels in order to sanitise and justify their desire for violence. You have to wonder why so many of them want to support Palestine Action, and so very performatively, instead of legal pro-Palestinian organisations that don't smash up Jewish businesses, damage military equipment and attack police officers with sledgehammers.

He was born with the right to UK citizenship because his mother is British.

Either the PM did or did not know that this individual was not the kind of person to celebrate coming into the country and I’m not sure which of these two scenarios is the most worrying.

I think I've seen a few. Sure they've been arrested as well for supporting Palestine Action Group. Of course there's also the Oxford twat who was arrested and charged. Hope to see a lot more and there's certainly no need for those ridiculous hate marches to still be going ahead.

Sorry just realised you included convictions. Now let's see what happens to said Oxford twat. Also be interesting to see the outcome of the inevitable Aston Villa match arrests. I know ine guy was arrested for breach of the peace but he was there interviewing. The police had their priorities wrong, once again.

Well said.

I don't see any effort to convict, despite people breaking existing laws.

I was a victim of hate crime, as the police were utterly hopeless and CCTV was inexplicably lost, despite them acknowledging that it existed.

It feels like selective enforcement.

This bad because it politicises the police.

You are correct that citizenship cannot legally be revoked if it leaves the individual stateless. In Begum's case, it is not just that she was deemed to have Bangladeshi citizenship, evidence provided by the Bangladeshi government was that she actually had citizenship, contrary to what Bangladeshi politicians said. It is widely reported that she lost Bangladeshi citizenship at the age of 21, but that appears to be contrary to the relevant law (Bangladesh's Citizenship Act). Nonetheless, the UK courts have accepted that she is now stateless, but the decision to revoke her UK citizenship did not leave her stateless as she had Bangladeshi citizenship at the time.

It's the rise of graduate hierarchy that's politicising the police.

What would you say the implications of Begum's case and el-Fattah's on each other? From what I'm reading it looks as though we may be stuck with the bastard. Can they revoke his citizenship quickly before Egypt does?