Belgium Hands Last Remains Of Patrice Lumumba

Belgium on Monday handed over the last remains of slain Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, which is a tooth, to his family, turning a page on a grim chapter in its colonial past.
Chief prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw gave the relatives a small, bright blue box containing the tooth in a televised ceremony, and said the legal action they had taken to receive the relic had delivered “justice”.
The tooth was placed in a casket that was then draped in the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which celebrates Lumumba, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961, as an anti-colonial hero.
Lumumba’s assassination — and the brutal history of Belgian control of the Congo — have been enduring sources of pain between the two countries and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo reiterated that his country’s authorities bore a “moral responsibility” over the killing.
Lumumba’s son Francois told Belgium’s RTBF broadcaster that his relatives had been waiting “more than 60 years” for this event and expressed hope this would provide solace for the family and the Congolese people.
A fiery critic of Belgium’s rapacious rule, Lumumba became his country’s first prime minister after it gained independence in 1960.
But he fell out with the former colonial power and the United States and was ousted in a coup a few months after taking office.
He was executed on January 17 1961, aged just 35, in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.
His body was dissolved in acid and never found.
But the tooth was kept as a trophy by one of those involved, a Belgian police officer.