The first and only elected Prime Minister of the Congo Republic, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated a few months after Congo gained formal independence from Belgium. The killing of Lumumba remained a secret for years.
Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elisabethville on 17 January 1961.On arrival, he and his associates were conducted under arrest to the Brouwez House, where they were brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan forces (a group looking to be seperate of the newly independent Congo Republic) and Belgian officers,while President Tshombe, of the state of Katanga, and his cabinet decided what to do with him.
Later that night, Lumumba was driven to an isolated spot where three firing squads had been assembled. A Belgian commission of inquiry found that the execution was carried out by Katanga's authorities. It reported that President Tshombe and two other ministers were present, with four Belgian officers under the command of Katangan authorities. He was put in a line up and shot. The execution is thought to have taken place on 17 January 1961, between 21:40 and 21:43 (according to the Belgian report). The Belgians and their counterparts later wished to get rid of the bodies, and did so by digging up and dismembering the corpses, then dissolving them in sulfuric acid while the bones were ground and scattered
In later years it has now come to light that the assassination was sanctioned by the Belgian government and the Dwight Eisenhower, the president of the United States at the time, acting through the local agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Congo, and was funded and advised by Brussels and Washington. A staunch enemy of Lumumba and President of Katanga, Congo independent province, president Tchombe, and Mobuto Sese Seko, who became Prime Minister after the death of Lumumba, took part in the plot.