Academic arrested, beaten and caged – but not broken

Academic freedom is a cause held dear by most scholars, but very few will suffer for it as Miguel Angel Beltrán has, writes Jack Grove for Times Higher Education. However, the Colombian sociologist did not set out to become a role model for dissident intellectual thought, let alone spend two years in a high-security prison for his beliefs.

So what had this softly spoken researcher done to warrant arrest, torture and extradition?

The reason related to a rocket attack on an Ecuadorian village, which had claimed the life of Raul Reyes, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. In the wreckage of the blast, a computer was recovered, which was said to contain two research papers written by Dr Beltrán while he was working at Bogota National University. The papers examined the changing role of student protest in Colombia and whether the FARC movement was an insurgency or simple terrorism, Beltrán explained.
Full report on the Times Higher Education site