Search Results for: Dag Hammarskjold

UN Hammarskjöld investigation: 2024 Report (just published)

Investigation into the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld and of the members of the party accompanying him

Attached is the 2024 Report of Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, who was appointed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to lead the investigation into the tragic plane crash in September 1961 that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the 15 people accompanying him. The 2024 Report has just been published and is available in the six official languages of the UN. The English-language version is attached.

The release of the 2024 Report is accompanied by a timely video:

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k19/k19owxcuwk

The 2024 Report advances the collective state of knowledge. At this juncture, Justice Othman assesses it to remain plausible that an external attack or threat was a cause of the crash. Justice Othman notes that the alternative hypotheses that appear to remain available are that the crash resulted from sabotage, or unintentional human error.

The 2024 Report is not able to reach a conclusion regarding the ultimate cause of the crash. It states that the primary obstacle to reaching any such definitive conclusion is the lack of full disclosure of specific and crucial information by a small number of UN Member States. The report states: ‘the three key Member States that are most likely to hold significant undisclosed information, being South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, have not disclosed any new material information since 2017.’ (p 71, para 299)

The 2024 Report makes six recommendations, which are set out in the conclusion and have the support of Secretary General Guterres. The first of these recommends that the UN investigation should continue.

DOWNLOAD HERE: 2024 EP Report A-78-1006

Online publication of papers and video recordings from Hammarskjöld conference

Courtesy of Dr. Susan Williams:

Dag Hammarskjöld’s Plane Crash: The Continuing Search for Truth

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the United Nations Association Westminster, hosted a day-long conference on 29 February 2024 to review:

the progress that has been made by the current UN investigation – led by Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, formerly Chief Justice of Tanzania – into the 1961 plane crash near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and fifteen others; and to identify next steps to assist the investigation.

HERE IS THE REPORT of the conference which has now been published on the Institute of Commonwealth Studies/School of Advanced Study/University of London website.

The report includes links to the conference videos, papers, and also to the School of Advanced Study YouTube channel.

You can view and download the event program here.

Who Killed Hammarskjold?: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa

30 December 2022: Mandate to renew the UN Investigation into the death of UNSG Hammarskjöld

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961.

Courtesy of Dr. Susan Williams:

On 30 December 2022, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution A/77/L.31, which authorises the renewal of the UN’s ‘Investigation into the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld and of the members of the party accompanying him.’ It further authorises the reappointment of the Eminent Person, Judge Mohamed Chande Othman, to lead the investigation.

The Resolution was initiated by Sweden and co-sponsored by 141 Member States (out of 193). The US and the UK did not co-sponsor the resolution.

The Resolution follows Judge Othman’s latest report (A/76/892), which is readily available on the UNA Westminster webpages on developments relating to the Hammarskjöld plane crash (along with various other significant documents and updates).

In this latest report, Judge Othman writes:

‘…I respectfully submit that the burden of proof to conduct a full review of records and archives resulting in full disclosure has not been discharged at the present time. Indeed, information received from other sources under the present mandate underscores that it is almost certain that these Member States [that is to say, the USA, the UK, and South Africa] created, held or were otherwise aware of specific and important information regarding the cause of the tragic event. That information is yet to be disclosed.’

In case of interest, the passing of the Resolution by the GA can be watched on UNTV. It takes about three minutes from 1.04.40: https://media.un.org/en/asset/k14/k14tlsg06p

RELATED:

Do Spy Agencies Hold Answer to Dag Hammarskjold’s Death? U.N. Wants to Know

Investigation into the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld and of the members of the party accompanying him

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

United Nations Secretary General, Dag_Hammarskjöld

In September 1961, UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously and fatally crashed while flying over African soil. With Hammarskjöld on his way to mediate tensions and defend Congo’s independence-contrary to the interests of Europe’s mining corporations-the crash was thought by many to be an assassination. As Cold Case Hammarskjöld director Mads Brügger (The Red Chapel, The Ambassador) begins to investigate the case with fresh eyes over 50 years later, he uncovers a conspiracy more sinister than anything he’d initially imagined. Brügger leads viewers down a wild investigative rabbit hole, and after scores of false starts, dead ends, and elusive interviews, Brügger and his private investigator sidekick begin to uncover secrets that could upturn history. This thrilling documentary challenges expectations of the genre and calls the fundamental nature of truth into question.

Watch the Official Trailer Here

Rent the film for $6.99 on YouTube

Visit Magnolia Pictures CCH website at https://www.coldcasehammarskjold.com/

Theory That Hammarskjold Plane Was Downed Is Bolstered by U.N. Report

[AARC Editorial Note: Readers interested in the following may detect eerie similarities between language used to address this case and the ways in which aspects of President Kennedy’s murder mysteries are described.]

By ALAN COWELL and RICK GLADSTONE|The New York Times|OCT. 25, 2017

The finding by Judge Mohamed Chande Othman, a senior Tanzanian jurist who was asked by the United Nations to review both old and newly uncovered evidence, gave weight to a longstanding suspicion that Mr. Hammarskjold may have been assassinated.

The crash, during the overnight of Sept. 17-18, 1961, remains a painful open wound in the history of the United Nations and one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries.

Judge Othman’s 63-page report offered a further rebuttal of the idea, advanced in inquiries soon after the crash, that pilot error or some other accident had caused Mr. Hammarskjold’s chartered DC-6 airplane to crash in what is now Zambia.

Moreover, Judge Othman’s conclusion reinforced the theory that the plane had been deliberately brought down, either by what the judge called “direct attack” or a distraction that diverted “the pilots’ attention for a matter of seconds at the critical point at which they were on their descent.”

At the time, Mr. Hammarskjold was flying to Ndola, in what was then Northern Rhodesia, for negotiations to end secession and civil war in the neighboring mineral-rich Congolese province of Katanga. The Katangese separatists were supported by Western political and mining interests not eager to see Mr. Hammarskjold’s diplomacy succeed.

In recent years, much attention has focused on the extent to which Western governments and their intelligence agencies, including those of Britain, the United States and Belgium, the former colonial power in Congo, have withheld information relating to Mr. Hammarskjold’s death.

Judge Othman said these countries had provided some “valuable new information” in response to his requests.

At the same time, he said, the “burden of proof” had now shifted to member states of the United Nations to “show that they have conducted a full review of records and archives in their custody or possession, including those that remain classified, for potentially relevant information.”

His remarks seemed to reinforce many earlier suggestions that, for whatever reason, Western governments were loath to disclose their full knowledge about what had befallen Mr. Hammarskjold, a Swedish diplomat killed at a tipping point in African history between colonial rule and independence.

At the time, Congo had achieved a fraught independence from Belgium, while British and Portuguese colonial rule still prevailed farther south. The secession of the southern Congolese province of Katanga illuminated the competition among rival superpowers and commercial interests for influence over Africa’s future.

For supporters of Katanga’s secession, Mr. Hammarskjold was a reviled figure.

Such were the concerns about his safety that his airplane, call-sign SE-BDY, flew a circuitous route, skirting Congolese territory and observing near-total radio silence before it approached Ndola.

Myriad theories about the causes of the crash have emerged, including pilot miscalculations of altitude and the sudden appearance in the nighttime skies of a secessionist warplane flown by a mercenary pilot.

Judge Othman’s report said: “There is a significant amount of evidence from eyewitnesses that they observed more than one aircraft in the air, that the other aircraft may have been a jet, that SE-BDY may have been on fire before it crashed and/or that SE-BDY was fired upon or otherwise actively engaged by another aircraft. In its totality, this evidence is not easily dismissed.”

Secretary General António Guterres, who released Judge Othman’s report, called its findings “insufficient to come to conclusions about the cause or causes of the crash.” But Mr. Guterres also said it seemed “likely that important additional information exists.”

Susan Williams, a British academic whose 2011 book “Who Killed Hammarskjold?” inspired the latest phase of high-level interest in the crash, said the report “reinforces my strong suspicion of foul play.”

“The onus is now on the U.K., the U.S., Belgium, France and South Africa, to release all relevant documents, including the secret records of their security and intelligence agencies and all intercepts” of radio traffic relating to the case, she said in an interview. She also urged multinational companies operating in the area to “release relevant records.”

Judge Othman’s report evoked an era when rebellious forces, white mercenaries and United Nations soldiers battled in breakaway Katanga as foreign intelligence agents chronicled and perhaps steered events for governments back home. American aircraft with high-powered radio transmitters flew clandestine intelligence missions, the report suggested, and United Nations communications were routinely intercepted.

One issue centered on the capability of Katangese secessionist forces and their foreign hires to attack Mr. Hammarskjold’s plane.

At the time the secessionists were using French-built Fouga Magister warplanes. Earlier inquiries had discounted their deployment because they lacked flying range, despite witness testimony about a second plane seen that night as Mr. Hammarskjold’s DC-6 approached Ndola.

But more recent evidence suggested that one or more Fouga Magisters could have flown a combat mission or harassed the DC-6 at a critical moment on its approach.

Judge Othman also said there had been evidence that the British colonial authorities had sought to ensure that early inquiries ascribed the crash to pilot error. But, he said, that conclusion should now be considered “logically unsound.”

He noted that, in the past few years, the United States had acknowledged the activities of C.I.A. officers in the Congo region and changed the narrative about the presence of Fouga Magisters in Katanga and American DC-3 Dakotas on the ground in Ndola at the time of the crash.

“Judging from history and the manner in which potential new information has emerged over the years,” his report said, “it is still likely that additional information will be located, unearthed or made available.”