Holidaymakers warned of increased arrest risk as destination becomes 'police state'
A former British ambassador has called for the Foreign Office to caution against travel to the country
Former British ambassador to Egypt, John Casson, has urged the Foreign Office to issue a travel warning for Brits considering trips to Egypt, citing heightened risks of arrest in the popular tourist destination.
Serving as the ambassador from 2014 to 2018, Mr Casson labelled the nation a "police state" that is "violent and vindictive" during his appearance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday.
Mr Casson's remarks come in the wake of a UN panel's decision, which found that Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a British-Egyptian pro-democracy campaigner jailed since December 2021 on charges of disseminating false news, is being unlawfully held by Egyptian authorities.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) declared that Mr Abd El-Fattah's incarceration was politically motivated.
Speaking to the Today programme, Mr Casson said: "This is a police state in Egypt: it's violent, it's vindictive," and added, "It's abusing a British citizen, Alaa Abd El-Fattah – tortured him. It's kept him in prison on bogus charges. It's causing a lot of distress to his family."
He further criticised the Egyptian government's interference with the British embassy's operations: "But it's also abusing the rights of the British Government to do its normal business, and it's blocking our embassy for the most fundamental function of visiting and supporting British nationals when they get into trouble.
"And that's why, with other parliamentarians today... I'm calling now for our Government to use all the tools it has to protect not just Alaa Abd El-Fattah, but all British citizens in Egypt. And that means, especially now, our official travel advice needs to caution against travel to Egypt."
Mr Casson, alongside prominent figures such as Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws and former Middle East minister Lord Hain, urged a government review of the travel advice for Egypt in The Times, stressing the gravity of the situation following the ordeal of Brit Alaa Abd El-Fattah.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Casson saidt: "After four years as ambassador in Egypt, if a friend or family came to me today and said, 'Should we be booking our winter sun in Egypt?', I would be saying you're taking a real risk.
"If you get into any kind of difficulties, you post the wrong thing on social media even, there's no guarantee (of) your right to be protected.
"There's no guarantee of due process, and we can't even be sure that the British embassy will be able to visit you or support you in the normal way."
Mr Casson recounted chilling memories: "If I just think back to the four years I spent in Egypt, there was a Cambridge University student who was tortured to death over a period of several days in police cells.
"There was a British woman who went on for a beach holiday in Egypt, and found herself in prison for a year because she had too many painkillers in her luggage.
"There was a string of child kidnap cases where British children were abducted by their estranged Egyptian parents, and the Egyptian authorities did not give protection to the rights of those children or the rights of their British families."
Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni was kidnapped and murdered in Cairo in 2016. Italy accused Egyptian police officers of his murder, a claim Egypt refuted.
In 2017, British national Laura Plummer was handed a three-year sentence in an Egyptian jail for bringing 290 Tramadol tablets into the country.
Mr Casson told the BBC: "Of course, our civil servants are always cautious about offending a country like Egypt, and that's why we're really saying this: this needs political will.
"It takes political will and a readiness to take real action and say that Egypt can't have it both ways. Egypt pretends to be a friend.
"It depends on British visitors to keep its economy afloat, and we need to demonstrate that that is not compatible with abusing our citizens and blocking our embassy. We can't have business as usual."
Last week, 100 MPs and peers urged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to "deploy every tool" available to help free Mr Abd El-Fattah.
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