Overview
- Brussels investigating judges ordered the 93-year-old former diplomat to stand trial on accusations of participation in war crimes linked to Patrice Lumumba’s 1961 assassination.
- The federal prosecutor alleges involvement in Lumumba’s illicit detention or transfer and in humiliating and degrading treatment prior to his killing.
- Davignon denies wrongdoing, and his lawyer has argued that the reasonable-time guarantee has been exceeded and has challenged the war-crimes classification.
- The case stems from a 2011 complaint by Lumumba’s children, and Davignon is the only remaining suspect from the original group still alive.
- Lawyers for Lumumba’s descendants welcomed the decision as a step toward accountability, noting it would be the first criminal court examination of alleged responsibility by representatives of a former colonial power in an African independence leader’s assassination.