The government could have avoided “embarrassing failures” in the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah by assigning a special envoy to deal with complex cases involving Britons detained abroad, Emily Thornberry has said.

The chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee criticized “serious gaps” in information sharing, which she said could have been addressed by having a dedicated official carry out background checks.

Former foreign secretary David Lammy said in 2024 the government would appoint an envoy to deal with “complex detention cases” involving Britons overseas, but no such figure was named.

In a letter to Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper, Thornberry said: “If an envoy had been appointed [in 2024] …it is clear to me that such embarrassing lapses in due diligence and information sharing could have been avoided.

“It would have been clearly within the envoy’s responsibility to conduct appropriate background and social media checks.”

Abd el-Fattah, who is at the center of a storm over comments he made on social media more than a decade ago, returned to the UK on Boxing Day after being pardoned and released from prison in Egypt.

The 44-year-old activist was granted British citizenship in 2021 by the Conservative government led by Boris Johnson. Successive British governments campaigned for his release.

In the days following Abd el-Fattah’s return, comments surfaced on social media – dating back to 2010 – in which he said Zionists, colonialists and police officers should be killed and that the British were “dogs and monkeys”.

Earlier this week, he “unequivocally” apologized for his tweets. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who initially said he was “delighted” at the activist’s return to the UK, has since condemned the tweets and said he was not aware of them.

British Conservatives and Reformers have both suggested that Abd el-Fattah be expelled from the United Kingdom and have his British citizenship revoked.

On Wednesday, Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick, who has led calls for Abd el-Fattah’s British citizenship to be revoked and his deportation, highlighted social media posts allegedly from an account belonging to his sister, Mona Seif, in which she referred to Hamas “imagining” its deadly attack on Israel in October 2023.

The post says images of Hamas militants arriving in Israel by paraglider look like “something from a science fiction movie,” adding: “I guess it takes a special imagination to find new ways to resist a highly advanced occupying army whose war crimes are constantly justified and approved by some of the most powerful governments! »

The comment was posted on

“Either you have the people’s right to resist military occupation or you don’t! It can’t be ‘just for people who look like me’.”

In other comments discovered this week, Abd el-Fattah asked in 2011 “who would cry if we killed Osama Saraya?” “, referring to the editor-in-chief of an Egyptian newspaper who had supported Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who was ousted from power during the Arab Spring.

In a 2010 tweet, Abd el-Fattah appeared to joke about a “suicide attack that would have cost the lives of a few Zionists.”

Cooper launched an investigation into “serious information failures” in the Abd el-Fattah affair.

Government sources say the Interior Ministry will not revoke his citizenship because his previous social media posts do not meet the legal requirements for such sanction.

Human rights activists said such a sanction would constitute an “extremely authoritarian measure”.