Belgium returns Lumumba tooth to family

Belgium handed over the last remains of slain Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba -- a tooth -- to his family, turning a page on a grim chapter in its colonial past.

Chief prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw gave the relatives a small, bright blue box containing the tooth in a televised ceremony, and said legal action they had taken to receive the relic had delivered "justice".

The tooth was placed in a casket that was then draped in the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which celebrates Lumumba, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961, as an anti-colonial hero.

Lumumba's assassination -- and the brutal history of Belgian control of the Congo -- have been enduring sources of pain between the two countries. 

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo reiterated that his country's authorities bore a "moral responsibility" over the killing. 

"I would like, in the presence of his family, to present in my turn the apologies of the Belgian government," he said.  

"A man was murdered for his political convictions, his words, his ideals."

"We are opening a new page in history."

A fiery critic of Belgium's rapacious rule, Lumumba became his country's first prime minister after it gained independence in 1960.  

He was executed on January 17 1961, aged just 35, in the southern region of Katanga, with the support of Belgian mercenaries. 

His body was dissolved in acid and never found.