Britain's counterterrorism police allegedly received multiple reports of Alaa Abd El-Fattah's incitement to violence, the presenter of a state-aligned Egyptian news channel revealed on Sunday.
On Friday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other cabinet ministers announced on social media that they were “delighted” that political activist El-Fattah had been brought to the UK and reunited with his family after 12 years in an Egyptian prison. However, his previous comments - such as him considering “killing any colonialists and especially Zionists heroic” - soon circulated online. British media then reported that Prime Minister Keir Starmer was not aware of Fattah's social media posts.
However, Ahmed Moussa of pro-Sisi channel Sada El-Balad disputed this on Monday, saying that Britain’s counterterrorism police received multiple complaints against Fattah.
Moussa also stated that in recent years the BBC had deliberately ignored posts by Fattah that included "explicit incitement to kill police officers and burn British police stations."
Moussa went on to call for "the criminal" Fattah to be stripped of his Egyptian citizenship: "he is in England now. It's his country and he can stay there. We don't want his face or his nonsense anymore."
'An inciter to mass murder and genocide'
In a tweet on Monday, Moussa reiterated that the Egyptian government take an urgent decision to strip Fattah of his citizenship, adding "this is an inciter to mass murder and genocide, and to the destruction of all state institutions - from the army to the police to the judiciary - indeed, to the destruction of Egypt itself. Stripping the Egyptian citizenship from the British criminal Alaa Abdel Fattah is a national duty."
This was corroborated by Egyptian-born UK-based security researcher Khaled Hassan on Monday.
"Cairo has outright rejected Starmer’s reported assertion that he was unaware of Alaa’s record of incitement to violence, maintaining that British officials were explicitly briefed on the matter," Hassan wrote on X.
Hassan also said he had been told by a well-connected Egyptian source that the Egyptian government is actually considering revoking Fattah's Egyptian citizenship.
"The apparent aim would be to shut down any discussion in the UK about revoking his British citizenship," he said. "Such a move would place the British government in a bind, as UK law prevents the removal of citizenship if it would render an individual stateless."