A 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat was ordered Tuesday to stand trial over the 1961 killing of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, in a decision hailed as a major step toward confronting Belgium’s colonial past.
Etienne Davignon, a former European commissioner and the only surviving figure among 10 Belgians accused by Lumumba’s family of complicity in his murder, is charged with participation in war crimes.
Lumumba’s grandson, Mehdi Lumumba, welcomed the Brussels court’s decision — which is subject to appeal — as “historic.”
“We are all relieved,” he told AFP. “Belgium is finally confronting its history.”
If the trial proceeds, Davignon would become the first Belgian official to face justice in the 65 years since Lumumba was executed and his body dissolved in acid.
The court also expanded the scope of the case beyond prosecutors’ initial submissions to include Lumumba’s political allies, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, who were killed alongside him.
Davignon’s lawyers, who deny all charges, argued during a closed-door hearing in January that too much time had passed since the events.
Lumumba’s relatives, however, say the case is long overdue.
“It’s a gigantic victory,” family lawyer Christophe Marchand said Tuesday. “No one believed when we first brought the case in 2011 that Belgium would prove capable of seriously investigating this. It’s very hard for a country to judge its own colonial crimes.”
Prosecutors allege Davignon was involved in the unlawful detention and transfer of Lumumba, as well as inhumane and degrading treatment.
A vocal critic of Belgian colonial rule, Lumumba became the Democratic Republic of Congo’s first prime minister after independence in 1960. He later fell out with Belgium and the United States and was ousted in a coup within months of taking office.
He was executed Jan. 17, 1961, at age 35 in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries. His body was never recovered.
Davignon, who later served as a vice president of the European Commission in the 1980s, was a junior diplomat at the time of the assassination. He had joined the diplomatic service in 1959 and was involved in early independence negotiations.
Marchand has described Davignon as “a link in the chain” of a state-backed criminal enterprise.
The case, part of Belgium’s long-running reckoning with its role in Lumumba’s killing, led to the discovery of one of the leader’s teeth — the only known remains of his body.
The tooth was seized from the daughter of a deceased Belgian police officer linked to the disappearance of Lumumba’s body and was returned to Congolese authorities in 2022 during an official ceremony.
At the handover, then-Prime Minister Alexander De Croo reiterated Belgium’s apology for its “moral responsibility” in Lumumba’s death, saying officials at the time “chose not to see” and “not to act.”