Dag Hammarskjöld's closest surviving relative has called for a new inquiry into the 50-year-old mystery surrounding the U.N. Secretary General's death in a plane crash in central Africa, after the publication of a book arguing that his aircraft was deliberately brought down.
The 50th anniversary of the Swedish statesman's death fell yesterday, September 18. The book, “ Who Killed Hammarskjöld ,” raises questions about the original inquiry carried out by the colonial Rhodesian authorities and introduces new evidence suggesting foul play behind the crash of Hammarskjöld's DC-6 plane near Ndola, in present-day Zambia.
Four years of research
In four years of research the book's author Susan Williams examined previously classified documents including statements from witnesses who saw a second plane in the sky at the time of the incident — evidence that was discounted or ignored by the original Rhodesian commission.
Williams found evidence that the post-mortem photographs may have been doctored and interviewed a former U.S. intelligence officer, then based at an American listening post in Cyprus, who said he heard a recording of a pilot shooting down the Secretary General's plane just after midnight on September 18, 1961. Williams says the evidence suggests that the DC-6, known as the Albertina, was brought down by mercenaries fighting for Katanga separatists who had revolted against the government of the newly-independent Congo with the help of Belgian mining interests.
Hammarskjöld was hated by many white settlers in the region for the U.N.'s military support of the Congolese government in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa. He went to Ndola with the aim of brokering a ceasefire, flying under cover of darkness to avoid being intercepted by Katangese warplanes.
Williams, a senior research fellow at the University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies, said: “We don't have any smoking gun or killer evidence but on the balance of probability on the basis of the evidence I collected, my view would be that the Hammarskjöld plane was attacked in the sky by a second plane.” The Secretary General's nephew, Knut Hammarskjöld, his closest living descendant, called for a new public inquiry in light of the new evidence. “There is much in Susan's book and her investigations that prove to me there is still quite a lot to be looked into,” Knut Hammarskjöld, now aged 89, told the Guardian . “The way this could be done is of course open, but the people who are responsible ... should come forward and the U.N. should be involved.” After the crash Knut Hammarskjöld flew to Ndola to collect his uncle's personal effects and was struck by the reluctance of the British authorities there to hand them over. He was eventually given his attache case which showed no signs of charring despite the inferno that had engulfed the Albertina when it crashed into the forest near Ndola. “For me, there has always been an question mark over the whole affair,” he said.
Two days after the crash the Rhodesian civil aviation department conducted an investigation which could find “no specific or definite cause.” That was followed by a Rhodesian public inquiry which blamed pilot error in February 1962.
Finally, a U.N. inquiry in April that year recorded an open verdict, saying it “could not exclude” the possibility of an attack on the Albertina. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
