Alaa Abd El-Fattah Height, Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Alaa Abd El-Fattah

• Alaa Abd El-Fattah was born and grew up in Cairo, Egypt.

• He was raised in a family of well-known Egyptian activists.

• Both of his parents were also activists and began their activism during the Anwar Sadat (an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt) era.

• Alaa has been partcipating in activism since 2015.

• His activism, combined with his innovative use of technology, made him a prominent voice during the uprising, where he also worked on developing Arabic-language versions of key software and platforms.

• With his wife, Manal Bahey El-Din Hassan, he co-founded the first Egyptian blog aggregators Manalaa and Omraneya.

• In 2005, the Manalaa blog won the Special Reporters Without Borders Award in Deutsche Welle’s Best of Blogs competition.

• On 7 May 2006, during a peaceful protest, Alaa was arrested, and he called for an independent judiciary. His arrest sparked solidarity protests around the world. In response, some people created a blog titled “Free Alaa” to advocate for his release from jail.

• On 20 June 2006, after spending 45 days, Abd El-Fattah was released. After his release, his wife quoted,

There’s no going back now, we’ll definitely be continuing our activities.”

• In January 2011, Alaa Abd El-Fattah became closely associated with Egypt’s 25 January Revolution and took part in almost every protest of it after it began.

• Although he was not in Egypt at the time of the revolution, and despite the government’s decision to shut down the internet as protests began, he managed to gather information from family and friends using landline phones. He then reported the events occurring in Egypt to the outside world during the early days of the revolution.

• On 2 February 2011, he returned to Egypt and joined the protest at Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests, and helped defend the protesters during the violent “camel battle.”

• On 30 October 2011, Alaa Abd El-Fattah was arrested for allegedly inciting violence during the 9 October Maspero demonstrations, which resulted in many injuries and deaths.

• After his arrest, his mother began her hunger strike, and his father and sisters also participated in the protest.

• International bodies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also called for the release of Abd El-Fattah.

• During his imprisonment, his son Khaled was born.

• On 25 December 2011, a court ordered his release, though he was placed under a travel ban.

• In November 2013, Abd El-Fattah was arrested again for violating the new protest law and allegedly encouraging a protest against the new constitution outside the Egyptian Parliament. In June 2014, he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

• In September 2014, the European United Left–Nordic Green Left nominated Abd El-Fattah for the Sakharov Prize. However, in October 2014, his nomination was withdrawn due to a controversial tweet he posted in 2012 during Israel’s bombing of Gaza, in which he wrote,

There is a critical number of Israelis that we need to kill and then the problem is solved” and that “…Israel must come to an end.”

• In October 2014, his sister Sanaa Seif, along with 22 others were sentenced for violating the new protest law. His mother and his other sister, Mona Seif, began a hunger strike in protest against their imprisonment. On 19 November 2014, his mother and sister ended their 76-day hunger strike.

• On 29 March 2019, Alaa was released, but was required to serve five years of parole, which required him to stay at a police station for 12 hours daily from evening until morning. During that time, his father also died.

• During the 2019 Egyptian protests, Abd El-Fattah was again arrested on 29 September 2019 by the National Security Agency and taken to State Security Prosecution on unknown charges.

• On 20 October 2021, Alaa published his bibliography titled, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.

• In December 2021, Abd El-Fattah was convicted and sentenced to five years of imprisonment for spreading “false news undermining national security.”

• During his detention at the Tora Prison, Abd El-Fattah became a British citizen through his British-born mother.

• On 2 April 2022, Alaa began his hunger strike, where he demanded a visit by United Kingdom Consulate staff. He was also kept in solitary confinement and refused access to books and the opportunity to exercise.

• Many celebrities and politicians across the world came in his support and urged the British foreign secretary Liz Truss to help secure the release of Abd el-Fattah.

• On 6 November 2022, after six months of hunger strike, Alaa also stopped drinking water. On 15 November 2022, his family received a letter from Alaa Abd El-Fattah that he had ended his hunger strike.

• Based on his sentencing, Abd El-Fattah was supposed to be released on 29 September 2024; however, the Egyptian authorities decided not to include his pre-trial detention, pushing the release date to 2027.

• On 30 September 2024, his mother, Laila Soueif, began a hunger strike outside the UK government’s Foreign Office in Westminster. She spent an hour each day outside 10 Downing Street. In the mid January 2025, she was joined by Australian journalist Peter Greste, who had been imprisoned in Egypt with Abd El-Fattah in 2013, for a 21-day hunger strike.
  

  Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s mother, while on her hunger strike

• On 10 October 2024, at a ceremony at the British Library, Arundhati Roy, winner of the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize awarded by English PEN, named Abd El-Fattah Abd El-Fattah as the international “writer of courage” with whom she had chosen to share the prize.

• In February 2025, his mother was hospitalised due to a severe fall in her blood sugar levels.

• In March 2025, after knowing the condition of his mother, Alaa Abd El-Fattah started the second phase of his hunger strike.

• On 13 June 2025, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Abd El-Fattah’s detention was unfair and violated several international human rights laws. On 9 September 2025, Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, ordered a review of the National Council for Human Rights’ petition for his pardon.

• On 22 September 2025, Alaa was finally pardoned, and on 23 September 2025, he was released from Wadi el-Natrun Prison and was at his home in Cairo.

• In November 2025, was flying to London with his sister Sanaa Seif, but he was not allowed to travel.

• However, in December 2025, his ban was lifted, and on 26 December, it was announced that Abd El-Fattah had arrived in the UK and had been reunited with his family.

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• After he arrived in the UK, several of his X posts, which contained openly racist views and incitements to violence, created a new controversy. In one of his posts, El-Fattah wrote,

I’m telling you that I hate white people” and referred to British people as “dogs and monkeys”.

• On 8 August 2011, during riots in England, he wrote,

Now my real criticism of these post-police murder riots is the wrong focus, go burn the City or Downing Street, or hunt police fools”

• In the same year, he wrote,

Police are not human” and “don’t have rights, we should just kill them all.”

• After these posts emerged, the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, wrote to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and criticised the government’s public welcome of Abd El-Fattah’s return to the United Kingdom.

• The Conservative Party, which was in government when Alaa was granted UK citizenship in 2021, also expressed regret over their decision. Various party leaders said they were unaware of Alaa’s tweets at the time and stated that El-Fattah’s citizenship should be denaturalised and he should be deported.

• Alaa Abd El-Fattah apologised on Instagram for his previous tweets. He wrote,

Looking at the tweets now – the ones that were not completely twisted out of their meaning – I do understand how shocking and hurtful they are, and for that I unequivocally apologise.”

Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s Instagram post, where he is apologising for his previous tweets

• On 29 December 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that,

Abd El-Fattah’s tweets would have added to the distress of many in the Jewish community in the UK.”

As @YvetteCooperMP sets out in her letter, the historic tweets by Alaa Abd El-Fattah are absolutely abhorrent.

With the rise of antisemitism, and recent horrific attacks, I know this has added to the distress of many in the Jewish community in the UK.

We are taking steps to… https://t.co/PcMxbupnQI

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) December 29, 2025

• Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also announced a review of “serious information failures” and said that she, Starmer, and David Lammy had been unaware of his previous tweets.