The affair emerged when Charles Stokes, an Irish trader and former Christian missionary, was arrested for illegal trading in the Congo and hanged without trial on 15 January 1895.
The Belgian officer responsible for the execution, Captain Hubert Lothaire, was convinced that Stokes had been selling guns to Arab rebels in the Eastern Congo in exchange for ivory.
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 found guilty of selling guns, gunpowder and detonators to the Congo Free State's Afro-Arab enemies (Said Abedi, Kilonga Longa and Kibonge).
There was no penal code, no clerk, the verdict was not read out loud to the convicted, and Stokes did not have a right of appeal, which as a British citizen he was entitled to.
Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the time, commented that if Stokes was in league with Arab slave-trading, then 'he deserved hanging'.