This week in 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, was assassinated by US and Belgium-backed mercenaries. His execution by firing squad followed a US/Belgium-backed coup, which had removed him from power after just a few months in office. 
The coup destroyed Lumumba’s efforts to wrestle the country away from Western colonial powers & create a proud, free nation governed by the principles of pan-Africanism, social & economic justice, fundamental rights and a neutral relations with the West & the USSR.
Following Congo’s independence from Belgium’s long and harsh colonial rule, Congo fell into chaos due to the UN, Belgium, and the US plotting against Lumumba. Belgium refused to fully hand power over and the US considered him an "African Fidel" and ordered him removed.
Belgian troops moved in to quell a Congolese mutiny against Belgian officers still holding their army posts and the UN troops refused to put down a Belgian-backed secession of mineral-rich Katanga Province.
The US and Belgium directed Lumumba’s chief of staff from the army Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph-Désiré Mobutu) to organize a coup in Sept 1960. But fearing Lumumba could return to power at anytime, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized his assassination.
CIA director Allen Dulles told Eisenhower on Sept. 21, 1960 that the ''danger of Soviet influence'' was still present in the Congo and that Lumumba ''remained a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of.''
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The CIA’s top scientist even arrived in Congo with a poison, which would kill Lumumba in a way not attributable to the US. The poison was to be slipped into Lumumba’s food or toothpaste and give him a disease native to Congo.
CIA director Dulles sent a message to C.I.A. station chief in Congo, Lawrence Devlin, that an assassination of Lumumba was an “urgent and prime objective” and he gave him the authority to replace him with a “pro-Western group” with a budget of $100,000.
By mid-October, headquarters was impatient. Bronson Tweedy, head of the African division of the C.I.A.'s clandestine services, suggested a 'commando type group'' could abduct Lumumba from the residence where he was under the protection of U.N. troops.
C.I.A. Station Chief Devlin recommended that a ''high-powered foreign-make rifle with telescopic scope and silencer'' be sent to him by diplomatic pouch. ''Hunting good here,'' he wrote cryptically, ''when lights right.''
Lumumba sensed his security was in jeopardy and attempted to flee to Stanleyville, 1,000 miles to the east on Nov 27, 1960, but was arrested on the way by Colonel Mobutu's soldiers and was imprisoned in Thysville, 90 miles from the capital of Leopoldville.
Lumumba was executed by Katangan provincial officials and Belgian mercenaries on the night of Jan. 17, 1961 by firing squad. The CIA claims to have had no hand in his death; however files demonstrate the CIA had spent months assisting Lumumba’s enemies in their plots against him.
Many believe it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would never allow Africans to control their strategic raw materials, for fear they would fall in the hands of their enemies in the USSR.
Recall that the Uranium for the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 was made from Congolese uranium.
Following Lumumba’s murder, protests erupted across the world, with huge protests in Yugoslavia, Egypt, Paris. There were even clashes at the UN.
