Legal action against UK university employing Trump-like deportation tactics to silence pro-Palestine student activism

London – International relations student Usama Ghanem is at risk of being sent back to the country he fled due to persecution if his indefinite suspension at King’s College London (KCL) is not overturned by the Courts, following a judicial review hearing. 

Ghanem stands to have his visa revoked, which would result in him being sent back to Egypt, a country with a deplorable human rights record. At just 16-years-old, Ghanem was unlawfully detained along with his father and brother and was tortured for speaking out against the current regime.

Ghanem, along with other students, participated in several university demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He opposed KCL hosting a Zionist speaker and the university’s significant financial investments with arms and other companies linked to apartheid Israel. 

He was specifically targeted by campus authorities, who through disciplinary processes repeatedly sought to silence him. Ghanem was suspended indefinitely, triggering a visa revocation process. KCL knew full well the circumstances under which Ghanem had fled Egypt, as well as the lasting trauma because of the torture he had endured, but proceeded nonetheless with a disciplinary process that puts him at risk of being sent back. 

Speaking to CAGE International, Usama Ghanem, said: 

“I first started protesting on campus after the start of the genocide in Gaza. I discovered more about King’s complicity within the genocide; about the investments, the heavy connections they have, not only with Israeli universities, but with Israeli military and forces, helping them research and develop their weapons and all of their studies and their research capabilities to kill more Palestinians.”

“I felt an insane amount of complicity within institutions that I paid tens of thousands of Pounds for per year as an international student. It all formed within me a very deep conviction that it is a betrayal, not only to the Palestinian people, but to my Muslim identity and my humanity to just see this happening and turn a blind eye.”

“I got singled out for an action that the student body had taken collectively against KCL…Kings chose to single me out, label me as a leader and tried to punish me and punish any dissent against its investments in Israel and to make an example of its students when they target their university for complicity, then this happens to them.” 

Head of Campaigns at CAGE International, Naila Ahmed, said: 

“The repression faced by Usama for his pro-Palestine activism is lifted directly from Trump’s mass campaign of expulsion, arrest, and deportation - simply for exercising free speech. King’s College London has built its repression on the existing frameworks of racist and Islamophobic counter-extremism policies, demonstrating what we’ve always known: such powers exist primarily to crush dissent.”

“It is shameful that one of the country’s leading institutions of learning has resorted to indefinitely suspending a student and triggering his potential deportation to a country with a deplorable human rights record. The legal challenge he has launched is crucial to ending such egregious abuses of power."