93 y/o Belgian diplomat to go on trial for colonial Congo assassination

 

Ex-Belgian diplomat faces trial over Lumumba assassination

Etienne Davignon took part in war crimes, including the “humiliating and degrading” treatment of the anti-colonial leader, prosecutors have said

Published 18 Mar, 2026 12:59 | Updated 18 Mar, 2026 14:00

©  AP Photo

A Belgian court has ordered former diplomat Etienne Davignon to stand trial over his alleged role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first prime minister and an anti-colonial figure, more than six decades ago.

Davignon, 93, is accused of participation in war crimes, including Lumumba’s “unlawful detention and transfer,” denying him a fair trial, and subjecting him to humiliating and degrading treatment, according to prosecutors.

The decision by the Council Chamber of the Brussels Court of First Instance, announced on Tuesday, also covers the killings of Lumumba’s allies Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito.

Davignon is the sole survivor among the ten Belgians accused by Lumumba’s family. He was not in court when the ruling was delivered, Reuters reported, adding that his lawyer declined to comment.

The former European commissioner was a junior diplomat at the time of Lumumba’s murder and has previously denied wrongdoing. He has two weeks to appeal and, unless the ruling is overturned, the trial is expected to begin in 2027.

READ MORE: Patrice Lumumba’s struggle was global, not just African – daughter

Lumumba became prime minister when Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, but was ousted within months and executed by firing squad in January 1961 at the age of 35. Although Congolese separatists carried out the assassination, questions have long persisted over Belgian and US involvement during the Cold War.

A Belgian parliamentary inquiry in 2001 found that Belgium bore “moral responsibility” for his death, a finding later acknowledged by the government in an official apology. Lumumba had sought Soviet support during Congo’s post-independence crisis, and the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) was named after him as a symbol of African independence.

READ MORE: 'We have suffered because we were Negroes': It took this man 200 days to become a legend in the fight against Western exploitation

In 2022, Belgium returned a gold-capped tooth – the only known remains of Lumumba – to his family.

In a press release, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said the Lumumba family has welcomed the latest court decision as the start of a long-awaited reckoning with Belgium’s responsibility for acts committed “in the name of colonial rule.”

“What we ask of this court is simple: the truth, spoken aloud, in the open, on the record of justice and history,” it stated.

Colonial Madness > France Admits murders and massacres in Colonial Africa

 

France admits waging ‘war’ in African state during decolonization – media

Macron has reportedly written to Cameroon’s leader admitting Paris’ role in the killing of pro-independence leaders between 1958 and 1960

FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron and Cameroonian President Paul Biya. ©  Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images

President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged France’s responsibility for “repressive violence” during and after Cameroon’s independence struggle in an official letter to his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya. The letter stops short of apologizing for atrocities committed by French troops in the Central African country.

The move followed a report released in January by a joint French-Cameroonian commission of historians that examined France’s suppression of independence movements from 1945 to 1971.

Macron, in the letter dated July 30 and made public on Tuesday, said the commission’s report “clearly highlighted that a war had taken place in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army carried out multiple forms of repressive violence.” 

“[The] war…continued beyond 1960 with France’s support for actions carried out by the independent Cameroonian authorities,” he wrote.

The president also accepted Paris’ responsibility for the deaths of four pro-independence leaders, Isaac Nyobe Pandjock, Ruben Um Nyobe, Paul Momo, and Jeremie Ndelene, killed between 1958 and 1960 in military operations under French command.

“It is up to me today to assume the role and responsibility of France in these events,” he stated.

READ MORE: France could discuss reparations for colonial massacres – media

The African country’s armed struggle for independence erupted in the 1950s, led by the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, which sought to end French rule and unite territories under British administration. Cameroon had been a German colony until World War I, when it was split between France and Britain, with the French-controlled area gaining independence in 1960 and the southern British Cameroons joining a year later.

READ MORE: Evil masterminds: Here’s how Europeans sealed Africa’s fate

In the letter, Macron pledged to open France’s archives, support further historical research, and establish a joint working group to implement the recommendations of the commission, which was launched in 2022 to address historic grievances and promote reconciliation.

In recent years, Paris has sought to confront its colonial-era abuses in Africa amid tense relations with former colonies. Macron has previously recognized France’s role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1945 massacre of tens of thousands of Algerians in Setif.

Failed State Made in the USA: Ex-President of Honduras and Coup Victim Zelaya Tells All

I have complained many times about how US corporations have raped Central Americans and many South Americans of their natural resources. And instead of making them wealthy, they are made poorer. Anyone who attempts to change the situation for the betterment of the people is liable to be removed by any means, often being replaced by autocrats completely devoid of conscience. 

I thought I was referring to well in the past, but, it appears that it is still going on in the 21st century. In fact, we can easily blame much of the current migrant crisis on America's southern border on America's political and financial interference in Central America. 

If the USA is going to be the moral leader of the world, it first has to present itself a moral.

Zelaya at a protest against the US-backed Hernandez government © Reuters / Jorge Cabrera

President Jose Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was deposed from power in a military coup after joining a progressive alliance of Latin American leaders and he has “absolutely no doubts” the US was behind his ouster, he tells RT America.

“The US warned me: If you sign the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (ALBA), you’re going to have problems with the US. I signed it, and six months later, I had problems,” Zelaya told RT America’s Rick Sanchez.

They kicked me out.

Washington “wave[s] their flags of human rights abroad, but they only apply those concepts to those they consider to be adversaries,” Zelaya says, pointing to his record of poverty reduction and economic growth – “I had the best indicators of human development in Honduran history!”

Because of the company he kept – working with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and other progressive US bogeymen to further Honduras’ economic development – the US “had an allergic reaction” and moved to take him out, he says.

“I didn’t have problems with the US,” Zelaya insists. “They simply didn’t accept the competition, because these transnational companies live off monopoly, they live off concessions. When you give them competition in the free market, they stop being capitalist. They become retrograde, authoritarian, and they play coups, wars, invasions.”

Zelaya was removed from power in 2009, deposed by heavily armed soldiers who came to his home while he was in his pajamas, in a coup Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused to call a coup.

Honduras has been sinking into chaos ever since. His progressive reforms such as building schools, adopting a pension system for the elderly and raising the minimum wage have been rolled back, and homicide rates had soared 50 percent by 2011. Trade unionists, journalists, judges, human rights and environmental activists have been targeted for extrajudicial killings.

His efforts to return to power have also been thwarted, once again by the US, he says. After his party won the 2017 election with nearly three quarters of the votes counted, it was the US ambassador who appeared with 5,000 boxes of ballots to declare another candidate the winner. Even the pro-US Organization of American States called for a new round of elections. Instead, the government suspended the constitution and imposed 10 days of martial law, after which the US recognized the rigged results.

“And with that, they impose a dictatorship in Honduras… that’s what we’re protesting against.”

Zelaya says the US sees Honduras “not as a colony or a province. They see us as an empty landscape where they invest and where they impose their rules.”

He does not blame only the Americans for the suffering of Honduras, however.

The Hondurans are guilty, the ones that bow down and kiss the boots of the US, the US military, or kiss up to the capitalist chiefs of Wall Street.