El Fassed studied political science at Leiden University and worked as a lobbyist and advisor for several human rights and humanitarian organizations, among others Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (LAW), the Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO), Oxfam Novib as well as Oxfam International.
He is a former Dutch politician and human rights activist as well as development aid worker He focused on matters of development aid, foreign policy, digital rights, open data and transparency. He quit his involvement for the site in 2009.
In 2007 El Fassed was involved in a scandal involving a letter allegedly written by Nelson Mandela to New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman.
The letter made comparison between South African apartheid to Israel"s treatment of Palestinians. The memo was widely cited even by President Jimmy Carter.
In 2007, political writer Joel Pollack revealed that the memo was drafted by El Fassed who eventually wrote his own blog post professing that the memo was in fact his own creation. Since 2013 he is director of the Open State Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands that promotes democratic transparency, accountability and participation with the development of online platforms and promotes unlocking and re-use of open (government) data.
As a member of GreenLeft (GroenLinks) he was an Member of Parliament from June 17, 2010 to September 19, 2012. From June 2010 until September 2012 he was a member of the Dutch House of Representatives.
