Peter Verlinden had been Belgian public broadcaster VRT’s Africa correspondent for 30 years. Since his retirement in 2019, he has freelanced for magazines such as Knack and Humo, as well as newspapers such as De Standaard and the online medium Doorbraak.be. He has published 15 books on the African Great Lakes region and researched, among other things, the smuggling of minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwanda and Uganda. Because of his critical reports on the regimes of these countries, Verlinden has on several occasions been the target of operations by various intelligence services.