Kacem El Ghazzali is a Moroccan human rights activist and intellectual. He was the author of ‘Bahmut’, one of the most controversial blogs in the Arab world, in which he proclaimed his atheism – only to receive a number of death threats.
In 2011 El Ghazzali fled Morocco for Switzerland, where he was naturalised in 2017. He has since addressed the Human Rights Council on various issues, including women’s rights in Iran and freedom of thought in Saudi Arabia. In 2015 he became a co-director of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom.
In 2018 El Ghazzali was named Swiss of the Year by Basler Zeitung.