Word: lumumba
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...stand idly by . . ." With his own words ringing in his ears, Nasser sent cultural missions to all the new black nations and appointed vigorous Ambassador Murad Ghaleb as Cairo's man on the board of the Congo's informal Diplomatic Society for the Preservation of Patrice Lumumba. But last week, soon after Kwame Nkrumah's Ghanaian charge d'affaires was thrown out on his ear for overzealous tinkering in local affairs, the Congo's President Kasavubu bluntly invited Nasser to withdraw the U.A.R.'s plotting Ghaleb and staff as well. Astonished at this ingratitude...
...endured the sweltering heat to welcome the Hero of Manhattan who had won U.N. acceptance as the Congo's leader. When the drenching rain began that evening, the gay crowds had scattered, and Kasavubu was enjoying himself at a homecoming banquet given in his home. Over at Patrice Lumumba's house, the Congolese guards took shelter in a garage; in the downpour, no one noticed the black limousine that slipped into Lumumba's driveway, then raced out again with its furtive passenger...
...late the next morning before anyone realized that Patrice Lumumba had escaped. Hastily, Military Boss Colonel Joseph Mobutu dashed to a telephone to sound the alarm and begin the chase. Out went telegrams to outposts around the country ordering "nationwide vigilance by every Congolese to capture the traitor"; roadblocks were set up on all the roads, and runways at the airport were blocked just in case Lumumba was still in town. Lumumba himself left a note behind saying that he had merely gone to Stanleyville to attend the funeral of one of his children who had died...
...when Colonel Mobutu's troops finally got their hands on the fleeing Lumumba, he already was beyond remote Port Francqui, a steamboat stop on the Kasai River, 400 miles from Leopoldville. As angry crowds surrounded the Port Francqui police station shouting "Judas" and "Traitor," the soldiers wired their army boss to collect Lumumba immediately, or they would shoot him for treason. Sternly, Mobutu sent back word not to harm the prisoner and dispatched a plane to pick him up. "I cannot judge him. He must defend himself before the courts," explained Mobutu...
When the plane returned a few hours later, the disheveled Lumumba, his hands manacled behind his back, was pushed at gun point into the back of an army truck where he squatted sullenly in his shirtsleeves for the ride to Colonel Mobutu's home in an army camp nearby. "We've got him, we've got him! Come and look!" cried soldiers, twisting his head for the benefit of photographers, and the crowds along the route jeered and cursed the man who once was Premier...