Foreign Secretary Orders Review Over Failures in Alaa Abd El-Fattah Case
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered an urgent review within the Foreign Office into serious information failures concerning the case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. The review will focus on due diligence in high-profile consular and human rights cases.
Cooper revealed that successive prime ministers were not briefed on historic tweets linked to Abd El-Fattah, and that civil servants involved were unaware of these posts. Abd El-Fattah has issued an unequivocal apology for social media posts that included calls for violence against Zionists, while stating that some posts were taken out of context.
The controversial tweets emerged after Abd El-Fattah returned to the UK on Boxing Day 2025, following years imprisoned in Egypt. He was pardoned in September 2025. Abd El-Fattah played a prominent role during Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring protests and was detained in September 2019. In December 2021, he was sentenced to five years in prison for spreading false news.
He was granted UK citizenship in December 2021, reportedly through his UK-born mother. Despite calls from Conservative and Reform UK parties to strip him of citizenship or deport him, there is currently no plan to do so as the law does not provide grounds for deportation.
Number 10 defended the government's handling of the case, stating it welcomes the return of a British citizen and condemns the historic tweets as abhorrent. The government reaffirmed its commitment to uphold religious and political freedom.
