Patrice_Lumumba_Photo_1960_b

Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister

(Ben Quinn , Guardian. 2 April 2013) – Claims over Patrice Lumumba’s 1961 assassination made by Labour peer    in letter to London Review of Books
Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister was abducted and    killed in a cold war operation run by British intelligence,    according to remarks said to have been made by the woman who was    leading the MI6 station in the central African country at the time.
A Labour peer has claimed that Baroness Park of Monmouth admitted to    him a few months before she died in March 2010 that she arranged    Patrice Lumumba’s killing in 1961 because of fears he would ally the    newly democratic country with the Soviet Union.
In a letter to the London Review of Books, Lord Lea said the    admission was made while he was having a cup of tea with Daphne    Park, who had been consul and first secretary from 1959 to 1961 in    Leopoldville, as the capital of Belgian Congo was known before it    was later renamed as Kinshasa following independence.
He wrote: “I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction    and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had    something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it’.”
Park, who was known by some as the “Queen of Spies” after four    decades as one of Britain’s top female intelligence agents, is    believed to have been sent by MI6 to the Belgian Congo in 1959 under    an official diplomatic guise as the Belgians were on the point of    being ousted from the country.
“We went on to discuss her contention that Lumumba would have handed    over the whole lot to the Russians: the high-value Katangese uranium    deposits as well as the diamonds and other important minerals    largely located in the secessionist eastern state of Katanga,” added    Lea, who wrote his letter in response to a review of a book by    Calder Walton about British intelligence activities during the    twilight of the British empire.
Doubts about the claim have been raised by historians and former    officials, including a former senior British intelligence official    who knew Park and told the Times: “It doesn’t sound like the sort of    remark Daphne Park would make. She was never indiscreet. Also MI6    never had a licence to kill.”
Mystery has continued to surround the death of Lumumba, who was shot    on 17 January 1961, although Belgian troops were known to have been    involved.
Park met Lumumba, the African leader who was to become the    short-lived prime minister of an independent Congo. After his    successor took power, she was arrested and beaten by his supporters.
She was able to get herself released and sought local UN    intervention, securing the release of Britons and other foreigners,    for which she was appointed OBE in 1960.