The Freedom From Religion Foundation announced today that the 2026 recipient of the Avijit Roy Courage Award will be Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar, a feminist and freethinker unjustly imprisoned in Morocco for blasphemy.

The memorial award was established in 2018 following the brutal murder of Avijit Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger, author and educator on the streets of Dhaka on Feb. 26, 2015, which set off a series of assassinations of freethinkers in the region. Recipients are chosen by FFRF in consultation with Roy’s widow, Bonya Ahmed, who was grievously wounded but survived the assassination attempt. The award includes a plaque with Roy’s image and a $5,000 honorarium. Last year’s recipient was atheist Mubarak Bala, who had been recently released from a Nigerian prison after serving many years for a blasphemy charge.

Lachgar was arrested on Aug. 11 last year, found guilty on Sept. 3 and sentenced to 30 months in prison for wearing a “blasphemous” T-shirt and for “insulting Islam.” She never wore her T-shirt, saying “Allah is lesbian,” in Morocco, but was photographed wearing the shirt in London to condemn the death sentence of two lesbians in Iran. The wording is a play on a well-known French anti-racist slogan, “I saw God. She is Black, communist and lesbian.”

More than 150 groups, including FFRF, are part of the Free Betty Coalition, which has a petition to the Moroccan kingdom urging a humanitarian pardon for Lachgar. At the time of her arrest and trial, she was scheduled to undergo surgery in France to replace a deteriorating prosthesis in her arm, implanted after bone cancer. Her health is worsening under the harsh conditions at the prison, and she risks amputation of her arm — or worse.

Following international protests in December, Lachgar was finally released from solitary confinement, but is still being denied a mattress.

FFRF has urged the U.S. State Department to intervene, noting to U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom Director Daniel Nadel that Morocco is violating international human rights treaties it has signed that guarantee freedom of conscience. FFRF reminded the Office of International Freedom that a resolution calling on the State Department to prioritize the global repeal of blasphemy, heresy and apostasy laws passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2020.

“It’s my devout hope that continuing outcry around the world will ensure that Betty will be freed long before our mid-October convention, so she will be able to attend in person or remotely to accept this award,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. Gaylor has known Lachgar for more than a decade, meeting her at several international conferences for ex-Muslims co-sponsored by FFRF.

Please contact the U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Morocco via this easy, automated action alert from FFRF Action Fund, requesting her immediate release.

Read more about Betty Lachgar’s courageous lifelong campaign as a freethinker, feminist and secular activist for human and civil rights.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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