{"id":338793,"date":"2025-12-28T06:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T06:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/338793\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T06:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T06:48:07","slug":"starmer-criticised-for-welcoming-return-of-egyptian-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/338793\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer criticised for welcoming return of Egyptian activist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abdel Fattah’s release in September followed a long campaign by his family – backed by celebrities such as actresses Dame Judi Dench and Olivia Colman – and lobbying by the British government.<\/p>\n

He had spent more than a decade of his life behind bars, including being handed a five-year sentence in December 2021 following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair.<\/p>\n

The previous Conservative administration had also lobbied for the activist to be freed<\/a> and a government spokesman said: “He is a British citizen. It has been a long-standing priority under successive governments to work for his release from detention, and to see him reunited with his family in the UK.”<\/p>\n

A Labour source also accused Jenrick of trying to rewrite history for his own political advantage.<\/p>\n

A writer, intellectual and software developer, Abdel Fattah rose to prominence during an uprising in 2011 that forced the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to resign.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Abdel Fattah was nominated for a European human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, but this was withdrawn over tweets about Israel he had posted in 2012.<\/p>\n

He said his comments had been part of a “private conversation” that took place during an Israeli offensive in Gaza and had been been taken out of context.<\/p>\n

After being removed from a travel ban list imposed by Egyptian authorities that kept him in the country for three months after his release from jail, Abdel Fattah has now reunited with his 14-year-old son, who lives in Brighton.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the BBC from Cairo in October after his release, he had said: “I’m learning how to get back into life.”<\/p>\n

He added: “I’m doing much better than I would have expected. Much better than most people would have expected.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abdel Fattah’s release in September followed a long campaign by his family – backed by celebrities such as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-338793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}