A 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat has been ordered by a Brussels court to stand trial over the assassination of Congo’s first prime minister and anti-colonial icon, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961. Lumumba, who became the prime minister of the country – now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo – upon its independence from Belgium on June 24, 1960, was ousted in September of the same year and later killed by a Belgian-backed secessionist rebel group just months later on January 16, 1961. On Tuesday, Etienne Davignon, 93, a former European commissioner who was a junior diplomat at the time, stands trial over his death, marking the first trial related to the murder of Lumumba. If the trial goes ahead, Davignon would be the first Belgian official to face the courts in 65 years since the prime minister was killed and his body was dissolved in acid. “No one believed when we first brought the case in 2011 that Belgium would prove capable of seriously investigating this,” he said, adding: “It’s very hard for a country to judge its own colonial crimes. ” As African countries pushed for independence from their European rulers in the 1960s, Lumumba rose as an anti-colonial hero, though his government lasted only three months.