65 years after the death of Congo’s first PM Patrice Lumumba, a Belgian court has sent 93-year old ex-diplomat, Etienne Davignon, to trial in the assassination case.

After Congo got independence in June 1960, Patrice Lumumba, 34, one of the most prominent voices of Africa’s anti-colonial movement, became its Prime Minister. Though Belgium had relinquished power, but it saw Lumumba as a threat to its political influence in the African country.

As the fate would have it, Lumumba was ousted from power in September the same year, and was arrested two months later. However, the worst was yet to come. In January, 1961, he was shot dead with two of his associates.

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Now 65 years later, a Belgian court has sent 93-year old ex-diplomat, Etienne Davignon, to trial in the assassination case. Davignon, is one of the ten Belgians accused of the murder. All nine others are now dead.

At that time Davingnon was a trainee diplomat. Later on he went on to become the vice-President of European Commission.

Investigation of Lumumba’s murder

50 years after the assassination of Lumumba, his son filed a criminal complaint on 23 June 2011 against eleven Belgian citizens for their involvement in the murder. After four years of stagnation, the proceedings were started on 17 June 2025, by Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s office.

On January 20 this year, the case was heard for the first time before the Brussels Court of First Instance. On this occasion, ten more members of the Lumumba family’s grandchild generation joined the proceedings as civil parties, as reported by ECCHR.

Mehdi Lumumba, the leader’s grandson, welcomed the Belgian court’s decision. “We are all relieved. Belgium is finally confronting its history,” he said, as reported by news agency AFP.

According to a 2001 parliamentary inquiry of Belgium, the country’s Belgian ministers bore a moral responsibility for the events that led to the Lumumba’s gruesome death. Belgium returned a gold-capped tooth to the Lumumba family in 2022 that one of the Belgians involved in the killing had kept as a macabre souvenir, as reported in The Guardian.

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However, he denied of any legal responsibility of Belgium for this. “Belgian ministers, diplomats, officials and officers had perhaps no intention to have Patrice Lumumba assassinated,” he had said. “No evidence has been found to support this.”

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