Three sentenced to life for murders of top South African scientists

A South African court has sentenced three men to seven life terms in jail for a 2022 attack in which two renowned academics were murdered, the national prosecutor said Wednesday.

Judith Masters, an internationally recognised primatologist, and her partner Fabien Genin, a biologist from France, were killed in September 2022 in a break-in at their home in the Hogsback area of the Eastern Cape province.

Masters, 67, was a professor at the University of Fort Hare in the nearby town of Alice and had recently retired as head of the African Primate Initiative for Ecology and Speciation (APIES) research unit based at the university.

Genin, 51, was a lecturer at the university and had also just retired from APIES, where he worked as a field researcher. Born in Toulouse, France, he had studied primates in Madagascar before moving to South Africa in 2006.

Masters was raped and then strangled in the attack, the National Prosecuting Authority said.

The High Court in the Eastern Cape sentenced the three attackers, who are aged between 22 and 34, to a combined seven life imprisonment terms plus another 60 years for the double murder, rape, robbery and housebreaking, it said.