October 24, 2025
Middle East Monitor
Students from leading universities across the United Kingdom hold a march to mark the second anniversary of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, in London, United Kingdom on October 7, 2025. [Aysu Biçer – Anadolu Agency]
King’s College London (KCL), a prestigious UK university, is facing legal action over its decision to indefinitely suspend a student and revoke his visa sponsorship, triggering potential deportation to Egypt. The move has been widely condemned as a targeted response to the student’s pro-Palestine activism and part of a wider trend of institutional repression against dissent over Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Usama Ghanem, a second-year international relations student and Egyptian national, was issued with an indefinite suspension after participating in a series of pro-Palestine protests on campus. The suspension automatically triggered the withdrawal of his visa sponsorship, a process likened to “Trumpian” deportation tactics by campaigners.
Ghanem, who fled Egypt due to political persecution, has a documented history of torture and trauma, having been detained and abused by Egyptian authorities in 2020 alongside members of his family. His experiences led to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which the university had been made aware of during his application and studies.
The case has drawn condemnation from CAGE International, which is supporting Ghanem’s legal action against KCL for alleged human rights violations, including unlawful discrimination, personal injury and harassment.
“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,” said Naila Ahmed, Head of Campaigns at CAGE International.
“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.”
Speaking to CAGE International, 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.”
Ghanem went on to add: “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.”
The university’s action is said to have followed pressure from an external pro-Israel organisation calling for disciplinary action against students who took part in a campus protest opposing Israeli apartheid and the genocide in Gaza.
Ghanem played a key role in the KCL Gaza Solidarity Encampment, launched in May 2024 in protest against Israel’s genocide on the besieged enclave and the university’s financial ties to companies complicit in the occupation and war crimes.
Since 7 October 2023, over 68,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, a third of them children, according to Gaza health authorities. In September, a UN commission of inquiry found Israel has committed acts of genocide in the territory.
Students at the encampment demanded that KCL sever all ties with Israeli institutions complicit in apartheid, divest from arms companies involved in Palestinian deaths, and commit to rebuilding Gaza’s devastated education sector.
No comments:
Post a Comment