A procedural hearing on the assassination of Patrice Lumumba is scheduled for 17 June at the Brussels Council Chamber, which will decide whether the case should be referred to the Court of Assizes after more than a decade of investigation.
François Lumumba, the eldest son of Patrice Lumumba, filed a civil suit in 2011 against ten Belgians accused of involvement in the assassination of his father, Patrice Lumumba.
Lumumba, Congo’s first Prime Minister after independence from Belgium in 1960, was executed by firing squad on 17 January 1961 in Katanga, in the presence of Belgian officials.
The lawsuit accuses the State of Belgium of war crimes, torture, and inhumane treatment. It alleges that the state was part of a conspiracy for Lumumba’s political and physical elimination. Among the original 10 accused, only Étienne Davignon, a former diplomat and businessman, aged 92, is still alive.
Following the lawsuit, the federal prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, led by an examining magistrate. On 18 January 2022, the magistrate sought access to documents from the parliamentary inquiry into Lumumba’s assassination, conducted between 2000 and 2001, which concluded that certain Belgian government officials held moral responsibility for Lumumba’s death.
However, then-Chamber President Éliane Tillieux objected to the seizure of some confidential documents related to closed-door commission sessions. In October 2022, the Brussels Indictment Chamber declared the seizure mostly legal, except for two documents.
In June 2022, Patrice Lumumba’s only remaining physical relic—a tooth taken by a Belgian colonist prior to incineration — was returned to his family by Belgian authorities at an official ceremony at the Egmont Palace in Brussels.
Then Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo acknowledged the moral responsibility of several Belgian cabinet ministers in the 1960s for the circumstances leading to Lumumba’s assassination and issued an apology on behalf of Belgium.
Lumumba’s remains were subsequently repatriated to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for burial.
