Tag: Egypt

When James Cleverly was reappointed foreign secretary last October, he tweeted he was “honoured” to be “continuing to protect UK interests overseas and support to our friends and allies around the world, defending democracy and freedom”. What he’s been doing tells a different story. Two days after tweeting of his pursuit of democracy, he was […]

Tony Blair’s visit to Egypt in April 1998 was his first trip to the Middle East since being elected prime minister the previous year.  In Cairo, Blair promoted British arms exports, attended the signing ceremony of a new energy deal with British Gas and announced the creation of an Egyptian British Business Council, telling a […]

The British military has used or threatened to use military force much more in the postwar world than is conventionally remembered or believed. Declassified has documented 83 interventions by the UK armed forces since 1945, in 47 different countries. The most striking of the British uses of force have been the overt invasions or armed […]

Egyptian dictator Abdul Fattah al-Sisi assumed power in 2014 after a military coup had overthrown Egypt’s first democratically-elected leader the previous year.  Since then he has presided over a human rights crackdown in the North African country, locking up thousands of political prisoners. Arbitary arrest and torture are widespread.  Sisi’s Egypt, which is set to […]

The brutal war in Yemen, which has raged since 2015, is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. A delicate truce since April has reduced some of the horror, but that deal seems to be breaking down.  It should be time to reflect about who, on all sides of the conflict, including in Britain, might be indicted […]

Alaa Abdel Fattah was working in South Africa when the 2011 revolution broke out in Egypt against its Western-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak. One of the cries on the street was: “Come on, Egypt: one, two, three! / One more push and we’ll be free!” Alaa and his wife raced back to help push. At 29 […]

Ten years on from the Arab Spring, the UK government’s relationship with a brutal regime in Egypt goes from strength to strength, as the country witnesses its worst human rights crisis in modern history, under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Britain’s intelligence agencies are teaching the next generation of spymasters from some of the world’s most repressive dictatorships, it can be revealed for the first time.

British policy centred on maintaining internal ‘stability’ in the Gulf states and on retaining access to key resources upon which its global power relied.

The UK press, from The Times to The Guardian, is also routinely helping to demonise states identified by the British government as enemies, while tending to whitewash those seen as allies.  The research, which analyses the UK national print media, suggests that the public is being bombarded by views and selective information supporting the priorities […]

Britain’s national press consistently portrays Britain as a supporter of noble objectives such as human rights and democracy. The extraordinary extent to which the public is being misinformed about the UK’s foreign and military policies is revealed in new statistical research by Declassified UK.