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”.

New England Patriots player Christian Barmore faces domestic violence charges, accused of assaulting the mother of his daughter who is pregnant with his second child, according to a criminal complaint.

The 26-year-old defensive tackle is charged with misdemeanor battery of a family/household member stemming from an incident that allegedly occurred at his Massachusetts apartment in August, according to court documents.

Barmore is scheduled to be arraigned on February 3.

The accusations against Barmore surfaced a day after allegations of strangulation and assault against Patriots star wide receiver Stefon Diggs came to light.

“The New England Patriots are aware of reports regarding an impending February indictment involving Christian Barmore, which stems from an alleged domestic incident that occurred in August. The Patriots were made aware at the time of the incident and notified the NFL in a timely manner,” the team said in a statement Wednesday.

The Patriots added: “The matter remains part of an ongoing legal process. We will respect that process, continue to monitor the situation closely, as we have over the past several months, and cooperate fully with the league. We will have no further comment at this time.”

Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was asked about the allegations against Barmore and Diggs during his weekly press conference on Wednesday.

“These are still allegations, and we have made a statement,” Vrabel said. “We’ve taken the allegations very seriously, and what comes out of this, I think we’ll have a lot of discussion then, but I don’t think we should jump to any conclusions at this point. Let’s let the process take its time.”

Barmore, 6 feet 5 inches tall and 315 pounds, is accused of assaulting the 31-year-old woman with whom he had been in an on-and-off relationship for more than three years, according to court documents.

According to the charging document, the victim alleged that Barmore assaulted her on August 8 in his apartment in Mansfield, Massachusetts.

The victim, who shares a child with Barmore and is pregnant with his second child, contacted the Mansfield Police Department on Aug. 25 to report the alleged abuse, saying she was hesitant to come forward sooner because Barmore is a professional athlete, according to the complaint.

She alleged that on the day of the incident, Barmore became angry with her over the air conditioning setting in her apartment and asked her “why she was eating her food,” according to the charging document.

The victim told a Mansfield police sergeant that when she packed some things to leave and called her mother, Barmore took her phone from her hand and hung up the call, according to the charging document. She said she was about to open a door and scream for help when Barmore allegedly “grabbed her before she could and threw her to the ground,” according to court documents.

She alleged that when she tried to get up, Barmore “grabbed her by the shirt at the neck” then let her go and called his mother, who tried to calm him down, according to the charging document.

The victim did not want to press charges against Barmore when she reported the incident, but then decided on Sept. 9 to press charges, according to court documents.

The criminal complaint against Barmore was filed on December 16.

In a statement to ESPN, Barmore’s attorney David Meier said, “We are confident that the evidence will demonstrate that no criminal conduct occurred. Based on the facts and the law, we hope that this personal matter will be resolved in the near future and that both parties will move forward together.”

On Tuesday, the accusations against Diggs became public. Diggs faces strangulation and assault charges stemming from a Dec. 2 incident in which her private boss alleged he attacked her as part of an argument over money she claimed the football player owed her.

According to a criminal complaint, Diggs allegedly “slapped her in the face” and “attempted to strangle her using the crook of his elbow around her neck.”

Meier, who also represents Diggs, said in a statement that the receiver “categorically denies these allegations … because they did not occur.”

“They are unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and never investigated — because they didn’t happen,” Meier said.

The Patriots are scheduled to play their final regular season game Sunday against the Miami Dolphins before entering the American Football Conference playoffs.

Vrabel said during his Wednesday press conference that he hadn’t heard anything that would prevent Diggs or Barmore from participating in Sunday’s game.

ABC News’ Alexandra Fine and David Kraft contributed to this report.

Beijing

In a statement released on New Year’s Eve, the PLA said the operation it dubbed “Mission Justice 2025” had “fully tested the integrated joint operations capabilities of its troops.”

“Always on high alert, troops of the theater command will continue to strengthen their combat readiness through intensive training, resolutely thwart attempts by Taiwan independence separatists and any external intervention, and firmly safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state,” said Capt. Li Xi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command.

The brief announcement, presented on video accompanied by upbeat martial music, offered no details about what constituted success, nor did it specify exactly when the exercises ended. An earlier announcement had said they would take place throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday, but it was unclear whether persistent drills continued into Wednesday around Taiwan.

There are many sensitivities in Taiwan

Taiwan has long been China’s most sensitive issue in the eyes of the international community.

Beijing has long insisted the island is its sovereign territory and has promised to retake it by force if necessary. The autonomous island separated from the mainland in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists withdrew after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists. This communist government has ruled the rest of China ever since.

Beijing sends warplanes and warships to the island almost daily, and in recent years it has stepped up the scope and scale of the exercises.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also spoke Wednesday, albeit indirectly, briefly referring to the situation in Taiwan in his annual New Year’s Eve address to the nation. He said Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share “a bond of blood and kinship.”

“The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable,” Xi said.

This week’s military maneuvers were greeted in many corners as inflammatory, and China itself acknowledged that they were designed to send a message to “external forces” — in short, to anyone who might come between its government and the island it cherishes.

The exercises were received critically

He has certain goals in mind in this regard. In November, the prime minister of Japan – a country that has a checkered history with China after brutally colonizing parts of it in the early 20th century – said she would not rule out military intervention if Taiwan faced a direct attack from the PLA.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that China’s military exercises around Taiwan constitute “an act that exacerbates tensions across the Taiwan Strait” and expressed concerns to Beijing.

“Japan hopes that issues concerning Taiwan will be resolved peacefully through dialogue, a position that the Japanese government has always maintained,” he said in a statement. “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait are important to the entire international community. Japan continues to follow developments with keen interest.”

And in mid-December, the United States announced a package of arms sales to Taiwan that, if approved by Congress, would represent the largest such aid ever given to the island — a move sharply criticized by China.

In the Philippines, which has intermittent disputes with China over other territories in the South China Sea, Defense Secretary Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr. said he was “deeply concerned about Chinese military and coast guard actions around Taiwan,” saying they undermine stability “in an already fragile geopolitical environment.”

“This increased scale of coercion has implications that extend beyond cross-Strait relations and into the broader Indo-Pacific community,” Teodoro said. “Fundamental principles of restraint must be respected.”

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said he was not worried because he has good relations with Xi and China “has been conducting naval exercises for 20 years in this region”.

Associated Press journalists Jim Gomez in Manila, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Simina Mistreanu in Beijing contributed.