Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down
The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers), August 17, 2011
Posted: 2011-08-23 14:47:24
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/17/dag-hammarskjold-un-secretary-gen...

New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder was covered up by British colonial authorities. A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The key witnesses were located and interviewed over the past three years by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker based in Africa. The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams ... which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region. Hammarskjöld was flying to Ndola for peace talks with the Katanga leadership at a meeting that the British helped arrange. The fiercely independent Swedish diplomat had, by then, enraged almost all the major powers on the security council with his support for decolonisation, but support from developing countries meant his re-election as secretary general would have been virtually guaranteed at the general assembly vote due the following year.

Note: Was Dag Hammarskjöld assassinated in a manner similar to that of popular U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone? For lots more from reliable sources on political assassinations, click here.