"Two federal employees have been arrested by the FBI for allegedly conspiring to smuggle monkeypox into the United States.
Vincent Munster, 53, a citizen of the Netherlands and chief of the Virus Ecology Section in the Laboratory of Virology at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, 38, a citizen of Cameroon and a research fellow in Munster’s section, were charged in a federal criminal complaint with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States. The two are also facing charges for making false statements to federal investigators.
Both individuals work in a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory focused on emerging viral pathogens and how they cross the species barrier, according to a Justice Department press release.
The charges stem from an incident on January 25, 2026, when the two researchers arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s McNamara Terminal on a flight originating from Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, via Paris. At the time, the Republic of the Congo was experiencing a monkeypox outbreak."
TP

No comments:
Post a Comment