Family of the then PM, Patrice Lumumba, welcomed the decision to charge Étienne Davignon as ‘the beginning of a reckoning.’ 17th March 2026 Soldiers stand guard over Patrice Lumumba (right) and his associate Joseph Okito after their arrest in December 1960. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images A former Belgian diplomat, 93, should stand trial over alleged complicity in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what was then the newly independent Congolese state, a Brussels court...