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The British-Egyptian activist at the centre of a political row appears to have endorsed new and baseless claims that he is the victim of a "smear campaign".

Alaa Abd El Fattah flew to the UK on Friday to be reunited with his family for the first time in 12 years following his release from an Egyptian jail where human rights groups said he had been unfairly detained.

The prime minister welcomed his return in a post on X but subsequently faced criticism after old social media posts emerged in which Mr Abd El-Fattah called for the killing of Zionists and police officers.

Sir Keir Starmer has since said he was unaware of the "absolutely abhorrent" resurfaced posts, which Mr Abd El Fattah has apologised for, and said the government was "taking steps to review the information failures in this case".

"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," he added.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has asked a senior civil servant to review why ministers in the current and former governments were not aware of Mr Abd El Fattah's previous comments.

Mr Abd El Fattah's apology, which came in a statement issued in the early hours of Monday morning, said that he understood "how shocking and hurtful" the posts were.

He said the comments were "expressions of a young man's anger".

The apology was welcomed by the prime minister's spokesman on Monday. He said it was a "fairly fulsome apology and that's clearly the right thing to do".

However, within hours of his apology, BBC News has established that Mr Abd El Fattah's Facebook account liked another user's post which described criticism of him as a "relentless smear campaign" being waged by "the richest man in the world, a couple of Middle East intelligence services, and a few Zionist organisations".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dm9944glpo