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The Support Committee for Ibtissame (Betty) Lachgar announced on Friday the launch of a «collective citizen forum for signatures» to demand the activist’s «immediate release». In a written statement, the committee denounced her continued detention, recalling that on September 3, 2025, Lachgar was sentenced in Morocco to 30 months in prison and a fine of 50,000 dirhams for comments deemed offensive to divinity.
The organization expressed concern over the clinical psychologist’s health and detention conditions, noting a «denial of access to urgent medical care, which could lead to an amputation; isolation with a ban on contact with other inmates; restricted contact with the outside world, limited to just a few minutes of phone calls per week to a single number» as well as «the absence of visits apart from her lawyers». They also pointed to the «lack of a mattress», despite the fact that one is required due to her arm prosthesis.
«Her detention conditions are particularly alarming and resemble disciplinary sanctions, even though she has committed no violation of prison rules», the committee stressed. They added that «during one of the rare phone calls with her family, she confided the suffering she endures from the psychological torture she is subjected to».
Co-founder of the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI), Ibtissame «Betty» Lachgar was prosecuted after posting on social media a photo taken abroad in which she wore a t-shirt with a slogan considered blasphemous in Morocco.
«We remind everyone that Ibtissame’s ‘crime’ is not a crime. The t-shirt that triggered hundreds of death threats and a heavy prison sentence was never worn in Morocco. Moroccan law, along with international conventions ratified by the Kingdom, guarantees freedom of opinion and expression. We believe, however, that article 267-5, introduced by Mustapha Ramid in 2015, is unconstitutional», the Support Committee stated.
They further argued that «this case should never have reached the courtroom» and insisted that «Ibtissame’s place is not in prison». They called on the public to sign the forum «not as an endorsement of the message on Ibtissame’s t-shirt, but because criminalizing an artistic or activist provocation places freedom of expression, a cornerstone of any rule of law, in jeopardy, and sends a deeply worrying signal: that intellectual, artistic, or symbolic critique can be treated as a crime».
