On this date in 1975, human rights and free speech activist Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar was born in Rabat, Morocco, the daughter of a trade unionist in the Moroccan capital. She studied at Lycée Descartes, a French international school in Rabat, before moving to Paris to study clinical psychology, criminology and victimology and graduating from Paris Descartes University in 2000.
She was diagnosed at age 20 in 1996 with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer. While she survived, it left her with a permanent disability; her left humerus was replaced by a medical prosthesis.
While working as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in victimology and criminology, she co-founded the Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés individuelles (MALI). MALI campaigns for human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and the freedom of conscience and worship. MALI also advocates for the abolition of the death penalty and decriminalization of abortion and sexual relations outside marriage.
Lachgar faced potential prosecution when she publicly admitted she had had an abortion. These and other actions prompted King Mohammed VI in 2015 to order a bill on abortion reform. A “kiss-in” in 2013 in front of the Parliament in Rabat is perhaps MALI’s most famous action. After teenagers were prosecuted for “indecent exposure” for posting a photo of their kiss on Facebook, MALI organized the event, garnering international coverage.
MALI dyed fountains in Rabat blood red in 2017, signifying that millions of women are victims of violence. Lachgar was investigated but not prosecuted. She was arrested in August 2025 after a photo showing her wearing a T-shirt was posted on social media. The T-shirt bore the slogan “Allah is lesbian,” and was inspired by an anti-racist quote by Anne-Marie Fauret in 1971: “I saw God. She is black, communist, and lesbian.”
She started wearing the shirt after two lesbians in Iran were sentenced to death and executed. After her arrest and trial, she was found guilty of “attacking Islam” and blasphemy and sentenced to two and a half years under harsh conditions in prison and a fine of 50,000 dirhams (about $5,500).
As of this writing in 2026, Lachgar’s life is endangered by the deterioration of her prosthesis, which has detached and shifted out of her shoulder joint. Replacement of her entire humerus is needed. “For more than a year, Betty has been separated from her family, her community, her work and the life she built,” said Shelley Segal of the Free Betty Coalition, a group that FFRF is allied with. Without the surgery, the deterioration will result in amputation and could be fatal.
She is slated to receive FFRF’s 2026 Avijit Roy Courage Award. Recipients are individuals working to spread rational discourse and have persisted, despite daunting hurdles, in their work to promote science, logic and humane ideas. It includes a $5,000 honorarium.
Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger, author and educator, was assassinated in Dhaka, which set off a series of assassinations of freethinkers in 2015.
