The Alaa Abd el-Fattah I know is a humanitarian

There is no doubt that my friend’s comments were reprehensible, but the tragic irony is that he was locked up for more than a decade for defending the very principles he is now accused of violating, says Peter Greste

I first knew Alaa Abd el-Fattah as a disembodied voice whispering through the bars of the steel door to my cell in Cairo’s notorious Tora Prison. It was early in January 2014, and I and two colleagues had just been arrested on spurious terrorism charges for my work as a journalist covering Egypt’s unfolding political crisis.

New to prison and solitary confinement, I was confused, disoriented and very scared.

Alaa’s gentle tones reassured me that I was in a political wing, alongside trade unionists, writers, judges and human rights activists. I was with friends, he said.

Once out of solitary, during the brief hours we were allowed out of our cells, I would stride the prison exercise yard alongside him, getting masterclasses in Egyptian history, politics and activism. He was a thoughtful, intelligent and astute observer of the Middle East, with a remarkable grasp of political theory, and I came to value that period as a time of deep learning.

The Alaa Abd el-Fattah I came to know inside those walls is not the person now being widely condemned for what are indisputably despicable tweets. The messages were offensive, violent, and some appeared to be antisemitic and homophobic. In one, he sarcastically declared, “By the way I’m a racist, I don’t like white people so piss off.”

There is no question that they are his. In a statement earlier this week, the activist and blogger acknowledged that he’d tapped out those messages as a younger, angrier and more intemperate man between 2010 and 2012.

“I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologise,” he said.

But he also pointed out that in the recent debate, some of his messages have been taken out of context from exchanges where he was clearly mocking antisemitism and homophobia.

In our conversations, I remember his anger at illegal Israeli settlements, but his bitterness was political – not race-based – and it never extended to Jews more broadly. In one of his tweets from May 2011, he said: “We stand against Zionism never against a religion, and there are many brave anti-Zionist jews.”

In another from October 2014, shortly before he was arrested and a couple of months before I met him, Alaa criticised settlers for displacing Palestinian civilians but said, “Israelis who oppose apartheid are my comrades.”

Whether or not you agree with his politics, those statements are not those of an antisemite and they certainly don’t threaten Jewish people or amount to incitement.

He also has a long history of defending Egypt’s minority communities. He faced a military tribunal for an article defending embattled Christians who’d been falsely accused of violence. And before he went to prison, during the brief 12 months that the Muslim Brotherhood was in government, he vigorously argued for an explicitly secular constitution that protected the rights of all.

I am also happy to confirm that Alaa is not a white-guy hater.

In January this year, I joined Alaa’s mother Laila Soueif on a hunger strike to support the campaign for his release. I did so because I recognised the grave injustice of locking him up for his activism as a human rights and pro-democracy campaigner. As we stood outside Downing Street, politicians from across the spectrum added their voices, alongside other human rights activists, lawyers, writers and artists. It was right to do so at the time, and it remains the right thing.

While he was behind bars, Alaa was indisputably the best known and most admired political prisoner in Egypt. He was popular and respected because his was a secular, moderate, rational voice for democracy. His political influence amongst secular Egyptians was why the government in Cairo used every means possible to keep him behind bars, even breaking its own laws to extend his detention beyond the sentence ordered by the court.

The tragic irony of the current row is that Alaa was locked up for more than a decade for defending the very principles he is now accused of violating.

Was Alaa wrong to make those remarks? Indisputably. He has clearly admitted that. But to somehow suggest that he now poses a threat to anybody in the UK and should therefore have his citizenship revoked is the height of political cynicism. (And any investigation from the counterterrorism police as Nigel Farage has called for, would frankly be a waste of valuable police time.)

There has been a lot of talk of respect for British values. If that includes campaigning for justice, the rule of law and democracy, then Alaa Abd el-Fattah should be welcomed, not shunned.