The following year Stokes married again, to an African woman named Limi, a relative of the chief of the Wanyamwesi, a tribe that supplied many of the bearers in his caravans.
The Arabo-Swahili who he was trading with were at war with the Congo Free State at the time and desperately needed weapons.
Through intercepted letters, Captain Hubert-Joseph Lothaire, the commander of the Belgian forces in the region, learned that Stokes was coming to the Congo to trade weapons.
Henry took advantage of the absence of a large part of Stokes' caravan, who were scattered in the forest searching for food, and arrested him in his tent in December 1894.
Stokes was found guilty of selling guns, gunpowder and detonators to the Belgians' Afro-Arab enemies (Kilonga Longa, Said Abedi and Kibonge).
[3] In August 1895, the press began to report in detail on this case, including in the Pall Mall Gazette by journalist Lionel Decle.