THE HAGUE: Investigators yesterday called on the United Nations to reopen a probe into the 1961 death of UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjold, citing “persuasive evidence” that his plane was shot down.
The enquiry called on the US National Security Agency to release cockpit recordings from the time to confirm whether a mercenary fighter jet may have shot down the plane.
Hammarskjold, the UN’s second secretary-general, died in mysterious circumstances in September 1961 while on a peace mission to the newly independent Congo, when his plane crashed shortly before landing at Ndola airport in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia).
The mineral-rich province of Katanga was at the time fighting to secede from Congo, with the backing of the West and their commercial interests in the region. “There is persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola,” said the 61-page report released in The Hague by a privately appointed commission consisting of high-profile international judges and diplomats.
Fifteen people including Hammarskjold died when the DC-6, known as the Albertina, smashed into the ground near Ndola. Retired British judge Stephen Sedley, the commission’s chairman, called for the UN to reopen its enquiry into Hammarskjold’s death.
Hammarskjold, who was 56 at the time of his death, is the only UN secretary general to have died while in office and also the only person to have been posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
AFP
