British-Egyptian activist has apologised over tweets appearing to condone violence against Zionists and police
The human rights campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s past social media posts have led to a widespread backlash since his return from detention in Egypt on Friday. What has happened?
Most of the social media posts in question were written on X between 2010 and 2012 during the Arab spring, when the British-Egyptian democracy activist was turning 30. The tweets appeared to show Abd el-Fattah calling for violence against Zionists and the police.
In the posts, most of which appear to have been deleted and could not immediately be verified, he described the killing of Zionists as heroic, adding “we need to kill more of them”. In 2011 he is accused of saying police “don’t have rights, we should just kill them all”. He also once described British people as dogs and monkeys.
Screenshots posted online appear to show that on 8 August 2011, during the London riots, he posted: “Go burn the city or downing street or hunt police u fools.” A year later he appeared to post: “By the way I’m a racist, I don’t like white people so piss off.”
