Two members of controversial feminist campaign group Femen were arrested on Tuesday in Morocco after protesting topless in front of a Rabat landmark against the kingdom's treatment of gays, authorities said.
The women, aged 25 and 30, were arrested as they tried to return to France, said Morocco's General Directorate of National Security.
The DGSN said the women were subsequently expelled from the country and banned from returning.
The pair had "performed an obscene sequence" and were "topless, sporting a slogan that offended public morality," an initial statement said.
The DGSN later denounced what it called a "provocative act" and "an offence unacceptable to the entirety of Moroccan society."
Images shared on social media showed them embracing each other with their tops off in front of the Hassan Tower, a landmark minaret in the Moroccan capital.
"In gay we trust" is written in black on the torso of one of them.
In Morocco, homosexuality is punishable by up to three years in jail.
Inna Shevchenko, the Paris-based head of Femen, said "our objective was to deliver our message and then leave the country. Again, we raise the question: 'what is more obscene and immoral -- parading with bared breasts or condemning people for their sexual identity?'"
Three Moroccan homosexuals were jailed in Morocco at the end of May.
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