Hubert Lothaire
| Hubert Joseph Lothaire | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
10 November 1865 Rochefort, Belgium |
| Died | 8 March 1929 (aged 63) Ixelles, Belgium |
| Allegiance |
 Belgium Congo Free State
|
| Rank | Captain |
| Battles/wars | Congo Arab war |
Hubert Joseph Lothaire (Rochefort, 10 November 1865 – Elsene, 8 May 1929) was a Belgian officer who served in the Force Publique of the Congo Free State. He started his military career as a lieutenant in the Belgian infantry, later he entered service in the Force Publique, where he commanded Congo Free State forces during the Congo Arab war. Lothaire was married to the sister of Francis Dhanis. On 7 May 1894, Captain Francis Dhanis returned to Europe and Lothaire assumed command of the Force Publique in the 'zone arabe' in his stead.
Through intercepted letters, Captain Hubert-Joseph Lothaire, the commander of the Congo Free State forces in the Ituri-campaign, learned that Charles Stokes was on his way from German East Africa to sell weapons to the Zanzibari slavers in the eastern Congo region. In December 1894, Lothaire sent Lieutenant Josué Henry with 70 men ahead to capture Stokes. Henry arrested Stokes in his tent, taking advantage of the absence of a large part of his caravan, that was out in the jungle gathering firewood and searching for food. Stokes was taken to Captain Lothaire in Lindi, who immediately formed a Drumhead court-martial. Stokes was found guilty of selling guns, gunpowder and detonators to the Congo Free State's Afro-Arab enemies (Said Abedi, Kilonga Longa and Kibonge). On 14 January 1895 he was sentenced to death and was hanged the next day (hoisted on a tree).
The procedure is said to have had many irregularities, including the use of false statements. There was no penal code, no clerk, the verdict wasn't read out loud to the convicted, and Stokes did not have a right of appeal, which as a British citizen he was entitled to.
To Lothaire, Charles Stokes was no more than a criminal whose hanging was fully justified. Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the time, commented that if Stokes was in league with Arab slave-trading, then ‘he deserved hanging’. Sir John Kirk, for years the British Consul in Zanzibar, remarked that “he was no loss to us, although he was an honest man.” The news of strokes’ execution was received with indifference by the British Foreign Office. When the German ambassador asked Sir Thomas H. Sanderson, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether the British government planned to take any steps regarding the execution of this “well-known character”, Sanderson wrote: “I do not quite understand why the Germans are pressing us.”
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Wikipedia