Belgium returns Lumumba's golden age to his family, six decades after his assassination
A court in Brussels ruled that a golden tooth found in some of the remains of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumemba must be returned to his family in Congo.
Lumumba was 35 years old when he was assassinated in 1961 after a military coup backed by Western powers including the United States and Belgium, the former colonial ruler of the Congo.
And involved no less than four senior Belgian officers in this former colony in killing the rebel Lumumba, and later disposed of his body in an attempt to cover the traces of their crime.
The former Belgian Police Commissioner in the Congo, Gerard Sweet, dismembered the body before dissolving it in sulfuric acid.
And it was proved from a German TV documentary in 1999 that he took some of Lumumba's body parts - two teeth and some fingers - as "a kind of hunting trophy", along with some of the bullets he was assassinated with.
Sweet died 20 years ago in Bruges.
And in 2016, his daughter, Godliffe Sweet, showed a Belgian magazine a golden tooth and some bullets, saying it was Lumumba's only remains.
Prosecutors seized these horrific souvenirs and are still investigating Belgium's involvement in the Lumemba assassination.
In July, one of Lumumba's daughters, Juliana Lumumba, sent a letter to King Philip, the King of Belgium, asking him to return what remained of her father's remains.
"After the horrific murder, he was sentenced to remain a lost soul forever, without a grave," she said.
Her message came after the king publicly apologized for the "acts of violence and atrocities" that the Congo was subjected to during the brutal Belgian colonial rule.
At least ten million Congolese died between 1885 and 1908, when Leopold II ran the country as his personal colony, stripping it of its resources, including ivory, and forcing locals to harvest rubber on plantations where beatings and murder were common.
After months of Congo's independence from Belgium, Lumumba faced an army rebellion and a separatist crisis in the mineral-rich province of Katanga, and Belgium supported and incited the rebellion, and the United Nations and the United States appealed for help, before Lumumba tried to seek refuge in the Soviet Union for support, but he was killed before To do that.
Blumumba was ousted in a coup and replaced by President Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the Congo, and renamed him Zaire, becoming a military dictator for more than three decades with US, French and Belgian support.
Lumumba was sent to the southern city of Elizabethville, now called Lubumbashi, where he was tortured and killed.
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