Belgium is returning a Congolese freedom fighter’s tooth 60 years after his murder
Lumumba’s family received a bright blue box containing the tooth in Brussels on June 20, with Belgium saying the legal route they followed to get it had finally led them to ‘justice.’
A tooth. A state funeral. An apology. About 61 years after the assassination of DRC’s freedom hero Patrice Lumumba under the backing of the country’s colonial master Belgium, preparations are underway for his official funeral in Kinshasa.
All that remains of the country’s hero is a golden tooth after his mutilated body was dissolved in sulfuric acid and the tooth kept as a “hunting trophy.”
In January 1961, Belgian police commissioner Gerard Soete ordered a firing squad to kill Lumumba and two of his cabinet ministers and ensure that no evidence would be found for the crime. He took a decision to make the bodies disappear once and for all. He would later describe the ordeal as traveling “to the depths of hell” in a 1999 documentary.
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