Patrice Lumumba’s last remains to return home

BRUSSELS - Sixty years after Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated and dissolved in acid, former colonial power Belgium is to restore his last remains - a single tooth - to his family.

The handover ceremony will launch a period of official mourning, during which both countries will look back on their troubled past and the Democratic Republic of Congo will lay to rest a national hero.

In an interview with AFP in Brussels, Francois and Roland Lumumba, 69 and 63, explained how they had travelled to make arrangements and fix dates for the events in the Belgian capital to commemorate their father.

Belgium, which once controlled a vast tract of central Africa as Belgian Congo, will finally hand back the tooth that is thought to be the last human remains of Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered in 1961. He is now known to have been killed on January 17 by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in the breakaway province of Katanga during the chaos that followed the territory's 1960 declaration of independence.

Perceived in Washington and Brussels as a potential friend of the Soviet Union, the young republic’s first prime minister was seen as a victim of Cold War rivalries.

After he was shot his body was dissolved in acid, but Belgium has now recovered a tooth that was apparently kept as a souvenir by a Flemish police commissioner who took part in the disposal of the remains.

This “relic” will now be returned to the family and laid to rest after a series of “national funerals” in his homeland. “For us, this is his remains, it means a lot to us,” said Roland Lumumba, the third of the late premier’s children after Francois and daughter Juliana, who last year wrote to Philippe, King of the Belgians, to ask for the tooth.

“As Africans we could not bring our grieving to an end without part of his remains among us. We have come to the end of a legal dispute that has lasted 60 years, and we are satisfied,” he told AFP.

“It’s a comfort, a new page has been turned,” François said.

– AFP.