The Tweet That Could Send a British-Egyptian Activist Back to Cairo

The Tweet That Could Send a British-Egyptian Activist Back to Cairo

London—Monday, 11 p.m. The WhatsApp messages started pinging before the BBC bulletin ended. Within minutes, #DeportAlaa was trending across the UK, and a 34-year-old human-rights campaigner who has lived in London since primary school found himself labelled a “foreign extremist” by a front-bench MP.

How seven-year-old tweets became front-page news

It began with a single screenshot: a 2015 post in which Alaa Abdel-Hamid criticised British arms sales to Egypt after the Rabaa massacre. The tweet, written when he was 23, was dug up by an anonymous account last Tuesday night. By dawn, the Daily Mail had splashed it across page five under the headline: “Activist who hates Britain enjoys £1.2 m taxpayer flat.”

By Thursday, the Home Secretary had 48 hours to decide whether the deportation petition—now 92,000 signatures strong—warrants emergency action.

Inside the Bethnal Green council estate where the campaigner grew up

Neighbours on the Cranbrook Estate still call him “Little Al,” the boy who sold broken laptops on eBay to fund school trips. “He fixed my router so my granddaughter could do her homework in lockdown,” says Brenda Okafor, 67. “Now they want to send him to an Egyptian prison cell.”

Abdel-Hamid’s British passport was issued in 2007; his dual nationality means the Home Office can strip it if he is deemed a “threat to the public good.” The last time the power was used was against a jihadi bride in 2019.

“I’ve never set foot in an Egyptian prison, but I can already taste the blood in my mouth”

“They want to package me as an imported danger, but I’m the kid who queued for Arsenal tickets and failed A-level maths. If tweets against torture make me a terrorist, then what country are we building?”

—Alaa Abdel-Hamid, speaking to The Observer through his solicitor on Friday

The political chessboard

• Conservative backbenchers see the case as a culture-war gift ahead of local elections.
• Labour’s shadow home secretary warned against “politicising nationality on the basis of old social-media posts.”
• Freedom-of-information requests reveal the deportation request originated from the New Conservatives Forum, a lobby group with links to a Bahraini PR firm.

What happens next

A judicial-review hearing is scheduled for 19 August. If the Home Secretary signs the order, Abdel-Hamid could be on a Cairo-bound plane within five days, bypassing the usual 72-hour notice because the case is classed as “conduct detrimental to national security.”

His lawyers argue the move breaches the British Nationality Act because it would render him stateless—Egypt does not permit dual nationality for adults who acquire it abroad.

A final scene: Saturday afternoon

Outside Willesden Magistrates’ Court, supporters chant “No one is illegal.” A counter-protest waves Union Jacks and sings “God Save the King.” Between them, a teenage girl holds a cardboard sign: “Your future tweets could be next.”