Ibtissame Lachgar and the shirt for which Photo was arrested: X – Maryam Namazie
A feminist militant from Morocco, Ibtissame Lachgar, was arrested for the “injury of the Islamic religion” after publishing on the social networks of a blasphemy photograph, AFP reports. At the end of July, the 50 -year -old woman posted a photo in which she appeared with a shirt that wrote “Allah is lesbian”.
The photograph was accompanied by a text in which Islam was labeled “like any religious ideology”, as “fascist, fault and misogynist”.
Withdrawn on Sunday, Ibissame Lachgar was charged on Tuesday for the “injury of the Islamic religion” and placed in preventive arrest. The deed is provided in article 267-5 of the Moroccan Criminal Code and sanctioned with imprisonment from 6 months to 2 years. The punishment can reach 5 years in prison if the deed is committed in public, “including by electronic means”.
Defenders of human rights denounce this article as being able to affect freedom of expression.
Posting has generated reactions on social networks, many internets demanding the arrest of the woman. In a Facebook post, Lachgar said she was used online and received “thousands of threats with rape, death, calling or lapidary”.
The date on which his trial will start has not yet been announced.
Lachgar is among the founders, in 2009, of the alternative movement for individual freedoms. Among his best known actions is a picnic organized in 2009, during Ramadan, to defend the right not to fast at that time, given that the law sanctions any Muslim that ostentatiously violate the post, without a valid religious reason.
