The Strange Case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah
10th January 2026
In the last days of 2025, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stoked controversy by welcoming activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to the UK after his release from prison in Egypt. Fattah has expressed extreme views, including hatred of white people and support for the killing of police and “Zionists,” including civilians. He became a UK citizen in 2021, while he was still in prison, on the basis of his mother’s UK citizenship. The right to citizenship by descent on the mother’s side for those born prior to 1983 used to be dependent on passing a “good character” test (rather than granted automatically), but this requirement was removed by the British Nationality Act 1981 (Remedial) Order 2019, due to judicial decisions made under the auspices of the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998. How, then, did human rights law come to facilitate the move to the UK of an activist whose own respect for human rights seems tenuous? To understand this, we need to look at the origins of human rights law.