In a rare judgment on Belgian involvement in a former colony, a Belgian court ordered on Tuesday that a 93-year-old former diplomat stand trial for the 1961 assassination of Congo’s former prime minister and independence icon, Patrice Lumumba, according to local media reports.
Lumumba, who was killed at 35, was the political springhead of mineral-rich Congo’s independence from colonial Belgium in June 1960. He served as the country’s first prime minister briefly for three months before he was forced out and killed a year later.
Etienne Davignon, a junior diplomatic intern in Kinshasa at the time, is the last living among 10 Belgians with suspected involvement in the killing.
Davignon has two weeks to appeal the charges and has previously denied any wrongdoing.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office is charging Davignon, a former vice president of the European Commission, with “participation in war crimes” in relations to his role in the “unlawful detention and transfer” of Lumumba.
The charge follows a 2011 case filed by Lumumba’s children in Belgium to demand justice for their father, who was killed by separatists in January 1961. Even though Lumumba’s killers were Congolese, questions have persisted over the complicity of Belgium and the United States in his death because of his perceived Communist ties.
His body was never found and was suspected to have been dissolved in acid.
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