Travel to holiday hotspot 'a real risk' says former ambassador

Former British ambassador to Egypt, John Casson, has urged the Foreign Office to issue a warning against travel to Egypt, citing heightened risks for Brits in the wake of a UN ruling on the illegal detention of a British-Egyptian activist.

Casson, who served as ambassador from 2014 to 2018, didn't mince words on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, labelling Egypt a "police state" that is "violent and vindictive".

His remarks come after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) found Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a pro-democracy campaigner jailed since December 2021 on charges of disseminating false news, to be unlawfully imprisoned due to his political beliefs.

"This is a police state in Egypt: it's violent, it's vindictive," Casson said on the Today programme. "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.

"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 has joined other prominent figures such as Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws and Lord Hain in a strong call for the Foreign Office to revisit its stance on travel to Egypt, urging reconnaissance and warning for potential British tourists.

Speaking to the BBC, |Mr Casson gave a stark warning from personal experience: "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."

Reflecting on his tenure in Egypt, Mr Casson recalled harrowing incidents: "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."

A British woman who went on a beach holiday to Egypt found herself imprisoned for a year after being caught with an excessive amount of painkillers in her luggage.

Additionally, there were several instances of child abduction where British children were taken by their estranged Egyptian parents, and the Egyptian authorities failed to safeguard the rights of those children and their British families.

In 2016, Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni was abducted and killed in Cairo, with Italy accusing Egyptian police officers of the crime - a charge Egypt vehemently denied.

In another case, British national Laura Plummer was sentenced to three years in an Egyptian prison in 2017 for attempting to bring 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.