Steve Driesen

Aged eighteen months, little Léo is the son of the director of a chemical factory. When the employees find out that the factory is to be closed, Bruno, one of the workers, kidnaps the toddler as a negotiating tool.

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.