3 days ago
Belgium seeking to try ex-official over killing of Congolese prime minister Lumumba
Over 60 years after the killing of the first Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, prosecutors in Belgium announced Tuesday they were looking to try the last of 10 Belgians accused of complicity in the murder of the iconic leader, in the European country's latest effort to reckon with its colonial past.
Belgian prosecutors said Tuesday that they were seeking to put a 92-year-old former diplomat on trial over the 1961 killing of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.
Etienne Davignon is the only one still alive among 10 Belgians who were accused of complicity in the murder of the independence icon in a 2011 lawsuit filed by Lumumba's children.
If he goes on trial, Davignon would be the first Belgian official to face justice in the more than six decades since Lumumba was murdered.
A fiery critic of Belgium's colonial rule, Lumumba became his country's first prime minister after it gained independence in 1960.
But he fell out with the former colonial power and with the United States and was ousted in a coup a few months after taking office.
He was executed on January 17, 1961, aged just 35, in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.
His body was dissolved in acid and never recovered.
Davignon, who went on to be a vice president of the European Commission in the 1980s, was a trainee diplomat at the time of the assassination.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Read more on FRANCE 24 EnglishRead also:DR Congo inters independence hero Lumumba's remains after national homageRemains of Congolese independence leader Lumumba returned home
