A Moroccan court rejected on Wednesday a request to release on bail activist Ibtissame Lachgar, who faces trial over “offending Islam”, despite concerns about her health, a defence lawyer said.<\/p>\n
Lachgar, a 50-year-old clinical psychologist, was arrested earlier this month after posting online in late July a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt with the word “Allah” in Arabic followed by “is lesbian”.<\/p>\n
Appearing on Wednesday before a judge for the first time, Lachgar seemed tired, wearing a medical brace on her left arm and smiling as she greeted supporters before the proceedings began at the courtroom in the capital Rabat, an AFP journalist said.<\/p>\n
“She is being treated for cancer and is due to undergo critical surgery on her left arm in September,” Lachgar’s lawyer Naima El Guellaf said.<\/p>\n
Guellaf said her client’s doctors have “warned of amputation if the surgery is not carried out”.<\/p>\n
Mohamed Khattab, another lawyer in her defence team, also said his client’s health was “critical”.<\/p>\n
The defence team said they provided the court with medical documents and guaranteed that Lachgar would “not run away from trial”, but the court rejected the request, Guellaf said.<\/p>\n
A similar request was rejected last week.<\/p>\n
The trial was adjourned until September 3 after two more lawyers joined the defence team.<\/p>\n
Guellaf said her client was being kept in isolation and was “forbidden from speaking to other inmates”.<\/p>\n
Lachgar’s social media post drew sharp backlash, with many calling for her arrest under a provision of the penal code that carries a sentence of up to two years in prison for “anyone who offends the Islamic religion”.<\/p>\n
That sentence can be raised to five years if the offence is committed in public, “including by electronic means”.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Lachgar founded the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI), known for holding a picnic during Ramadan that year to challenge a law criminalising breaking the fast in public without a valid religious reason.<\/p>\n
MALI has led several other campaigns protesting violence against women and child sexual abuse.<\/p>\n
Lachgar has had previous run-ins with the authorities, having been arrested in 2016 for disturbing public order and in 2018 amid a campaign in support of abortion rights, though she was not prosecuted in those cases.<\/p>\n
isb\/kao\/bou\/ami\/jsa<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Moroccan court rejected on Wednesday a request to release on bail activist Ibtissame Lachgar, who faces trial over “offending Islam”, despite concerns about her health, a defence lawyer said. Lachgar, a 50-year-old clinical psychologist, was arrested earlier this month after posting online in late July a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[407,127,284,422],"class_list":["post-7966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-morocco","tag-religion","tag-rights","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}