A prominent Sudanese geneticist has been detained after speaking out against the regime there, ScienceInsider reports.
According to ScienceInsider, Muntaser Ibrahim leads the University of Khartoum's Institute of Endemic Diseases, where he studies the genetics of malaria and other diseases as well as Sudanese genomic diversity. In recent months, Ibrahim has protested the Sudanese government's dictatorship, and while he was arrested and released twice before, he has yet to be released following his detainment in late February, it adds. That arrest, ScienceInsider notes, came after Ibrahim and other Khartoum scholars developed a national reform plan.
"[Ibrahim] is a leading scientist of genetics, a supervisor of many students, and a member of several scientific associations in country and abroad," Suad Sulaiman, a parasitologist and member of the Sudanese National Academy of Science — a group that Ibrahim was a founding member of — tells ScienceInsider. "His imprisonment will deprive science and research of his contributions."