Cairo, January 09: Egypt told British MP George Galloway he was persona non grata on Friday after activists who joined him to send an aid convoy to Gaza clashed with police.
But officials denied that they had deported the left-winger.
A foreign ministry official told Galloway he was no longer welcome before he left Cairo airport for London.
The foreign ministry later issued a statement saying Galloway would not be allowed to return to Egypt.
The decision came two days after activists with the Viva Palestina convoy clashed with police in the port town of El-Arish, 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the Gaza border.
They had been protesting an Egyptian decision to send some of the convoy’s trucks to Gaza through Israel.
Egypt allowed most of the convoy and Galloway to enter Gaza after the clashes.
A spokeswoman with the Viva Palestina convoy said Galloway had returned to Egypt earlier on Friday after hearing reports that seven members of the convoy had been arrested.
Seven protesters were arrested during Tuesday’s clashes, but police swapped them for four policemen held by the activists. A prosecutor in El-Arish later issued warrants for the arrest of the seven.
Viva Palestina said Galloway and a companion were forced into a van on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing and taken to Cairo airport.
“Galloway was officially deported from Cairo today (Friday), when Egyptian plain-clothes police officers bundled him onto a London plane,” the statement said.
A security official said six police cars had waited for Galloway at the border crossing and escorted him to Cairo. Security and airport officials denied he was deported, saying he left willingly.
Although it was not the first convoy led by Galloway to deliver aid to Gaza, the arrival of the convoy early this year came amid a bitter dispute between Egypt and the organisers.
The convoy was held up for days in the Jordanian port town of Aqaba after Egypt refused it entry through the southern Sinai.
The convoy was forced to travel to the Syrian port of Latakia and take a ferry to El-Arish on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
Egypt accused Galloway, who had once called for the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a London rally, of trying to embarrass the country, which has refused to permanently open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
Israel has closed its border with Gaza to all but limited supplies since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory in 2007.
Last March, Canada refused Galloway entry saying that he supported Hamas, which it blacklists as a terrorist group, like the European Union and the United States.
—Agencies