Imprisoned for two months by Kasavubu’s central government, he had won release by promising Strongman Joseph Mobutu that he would merge his 11,600 army, officered by 634 Europeans, with that of ...

In a yellow plaster house with a red tin roof on the outskirts of Leopoldville, Colonel Joseph Mobutu, 29, bit his fingernails, answered the telephone, coped with a stream of visitors, and tried ...

Etienne Davignon, 92, is accused of involvement in the detention of Patrice Lumumba before he was killed in 1961.

Mobutu Sese Seko was born Joseph-Desire Mobutu to a cook and hotel maid. In 1949 he was conscripted into colonial Congolese army. He left the army at 25 and became editor of Actualités ...

Mobutu wrested the presidency from Joseph Kasa-Vubu in 1965. Kasa-Vubu’s role as the Congo’s first president has been overlooked by the history books.

Joseph Mobutu, then an army chief, seized power from Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1965 in a bloody CIA-backed coup. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire and himself Mobutu Sese Seko.