Emiliano Rodríguez MegaGuilherme Franco Netto, a prominent public health scientist in Brazil, was sound asleep in his Rio de Janeiro apartment when his daughter woke him early on 6 August.
She looked alarmed. Three federal police officers were at the door.Soon, Franco Netto found himself behind bars, under suspicion of aiding a scheme to defraud the government by manipulating the award of a funding contract for a public health research project.News of his arrest sparked outrage among his colleagues.
They collected thousands of signatures on a petition demanding his release, convinced that his imprisonment was the result of a misunderstanding, an abuse of power, or both.