Terrifying details of US-sponsored plot to kill Patrice Lumumba

The chilling January reminds us the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who was assassinated more than 50 years ago on 17 January, 1961.

This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.

The assassination's historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba's overall legacy as a nationalist leader.

For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo's destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognize the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.

When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold's Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony.

It was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp.

It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilize them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests.

In the summer of 1960, there was great concern at the highest levels in the United States government about the role of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Lumumba, who was viewed with alarm by United States policymakers because of what they perceived as his magnetic public appeal and his leanings toward the Soviet Union.

To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals , and hired killers.

On January 17, 1961, Lumumba and two associates (Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo) were transferred via airplane to Katanga, the stronghold of his political enemy, Tshombe. He and his companions were beaten so badly that the pilot warned the violence was threatening the flight.

Once in Katanga, they were taken to a private villa, where they were subject to more beatings by both Belgian and Congolese forces, and met with Tshombe and other Katangan officials.

Lumumba and his associates were then executed by a Katangan firing squad, under Belgian supervision, and in the presence of Katangan and Belgian officials and officers. The bodies were then thrown into shallow graves.

A Katangan government official later ordered that the bodies disappear. At that point, a Belgian police officer led a group that searched for the graves, dug up the bodies, hacked them to pieces, and dissolved as much of the body parts as they could in sulphuric acid. Anything that remained was set on fire.

The truth was hidden despite international protests at Belgian embassies nationwide until 1999 when Ludo De Witte’s book titled, The Assassination of Lumumba, presented new evidence taken from documents long hidden in official archives and interviews of surviving witnesses.

The Belgian government admitted to having had “undeniable responsibility in the events that led to Lumumba’s death” but did not take full responsibility and issued a public pardon of the Belgians involved in the assassination of Lumumba.