A court in South Africa has given three men seven life sentences for an assault in 2022 in which two well-known scholars were killed, according to the national prosecutor on Wednesday.
In September 2022, Judith Masters, a highly regarded primatologist, and her partner Fabien Genin, a biologist from France, were murdered during a break-in at their residence in the Hogsback region of the Eastern Cape province.
The 67-year-old Masters 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, aged 51, was a lecturer at the university and had also recently retired from APIES, where he worked as a field researcher.
Originally from Toulouse, France, he had conducted primate research in Madagascar before relocating to South Africa in 2006.
The National Prosecuting Authority stated that Masters was sexually assaulted and then suffocated during the attack.
The High Court in the Eastern Cape handed down a combined seven life sentences and an additional 60 years to the three assailants, who are between 22 and 34 years old, for the double homicide, sexual assault, theft, and home invasion.