Who was Gerard Soete, Belgian colonel who assassinated Patrice Lumumba by dissolving his body in aci

Gerard Soete was a Belgian colonial gendarme, novelist, and teacher. One year before his death, in 1999, it was revealed that he was involved in disposing of Patrice Lumumba’s body in the aftermath of his assassination.

Who was Gerard Soete?

Gerard Soete was born in Belgium on January 29, 1920. After studying German, Soete traveled to the Belgian Congo in 1946 and joined the police service in Élisabethville, Katanga’s capital. He retired from the force as the Inspector-General of Police in Katanga.

The Belgian Congo gained independence on June 30, 1960, and Soete remained in Katanga when the State of Katanga was declared an independent country governed by President Mose Tshombe eleven days after Congo’s independence.

Gerard Soete’s Murder of Patrice Lumumba

On August 28, 1987, Soete was interviewed by Jacques Brassinne de La Buissière, a former Katanga civil official conducting a Ph.D. dissertation on the assassination of Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and his political associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito. The Doctoral dissertation remained under embargo until the Belgian parliamentary inquiry into Lumumba’s death in 2001.

(Photo: Patrice Lumumba)

Even though Soete was not implicated in Lumumba’s murder, police commissioner Frans Verscheure ordered him to dispose of the remains. Soete and his brother excavated and dissolved the mortal remains in sulfuric acid. Soete later revealed a bullet that went through Lumumba’s torso and two teeth that he pried off during an interview on German television.

Ludo De Witte released De moord op Lumumba (The assassination of Lumumba) in 1999.
The author spoke with Soete, who admitted freely that he was present to exhume and destroy the bodies, and that he felt no guilt for doing so.

The publication of De Witte’s book provoked a diplomatic crisis between Belgium and Congo, which prompted the parliamentary investigation. Soete was asked to hand up the teeth to the investigation, but he claimed to have tossed them into the North Sea.

However, Soete sadly passed away in 2000. Meanwhile, a tooth purported to be from Lumumba’s body was confiscated in January 2016 at the home of Soete’s daughter Godelieve.

A Belgian judge ordered four years later that Belgium must return the tooth.
Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi said in December 2020 that the tooth will be returned to Congo in 2021 and that Lumumba would be properly buried.

Soete stayed in Congo for another eleven years, working for Mobutu Sese Seko’s administration. He relocated to Bruges in 1972 and worked as a language teacher at Saint Leo College until his retirement.

He was also a novelist and nonfiction writer about Congo’s colonial life. In his 1978 novel De arena, he portrays Lumumba’s death in all its gory details. He wrote under the pen name Geert Van Puthen on occasion. Aside from his novels and non-fiction publications, he produced numerous essays for the cultural magazine Kruispunt.

Soete died at home in Sint-Kruis of cardiac arrest.

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