Wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de moord op Julien Lahaut.

The assassination of Julien Lahaut is a recurrent theme in Belgian politics. On August 18, 1950, the president of the Communist Party was shot in his house in Seraing. A week before, he had interrupted the ceremony that made Baudouin the Royal Prince by shouting Vive la République. The inquiry into Lahauts murder lasted for 20 years and did not come up with conclusive answers to a number of outstanding questions. Since 1970 commentators have advanced a variety of hypotheses to explain what happened. They have connected the murder to the Cold War and the Royal Question, and blamed the failure of the inquiry on a conspiracy in high places. In this project the circumstances of the assassination and the public reactions of politicians and the press will be analysed; various theories will be checked on the basis of new archival material, and the project will explore the shortcomings of the judicial process. The research is conducted in collaboration with SOMA (Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society) and at the request of the Belgian Senate, which voted a resolution on this matter. The Senate considered transparency in this case important for the Belgian rule of law.

Keywords:Anticommunism, Royal Question, Cold War, Julien Lahaut

Disciplines:History