Lalla Batoul Benaîssa (Arabic: لالة بتول بن عيسى) is believed to be the first woman in modern Morocco to have been imprisoned for political reasons.
In 1910, she was jailed and tortured by Sultan Abdelhafid as the wife of El-Bacha Benaïssa, the Governor of Fez and one of the principal aides of his brother Abdelaziz, whom he had overthrown in 1908.
[3] Harris describes the events as follows: [The sultan] gave orders that the fortune [of the governor of Fez] was to be found; and thus fresh privations and more floggings ensued, but all to no avail.
Then the women were arrested, amongst them the aristocratic wife of the Governor of Fez, a lady of good family and high position.
In 2013, the Moroccan historian Maati Monjib discovered documents in the colonial archives in Nantes that revealed that Lalla Batoul not only was an intelligent and cultured aristocrat but also had a well-developed set of connections with Europeans living in Morocco.