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From 8 august
secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down in 1961
From today
Stockholm - Fifty years on from the plane crash which killed UN chief Dag Hammarskjoeld, there is a chorus of demands for a new probe into his death that many claim was the work of mercenaries.
Hammarskjoeld was killed on the night of September 17-18, 1961, when his DC-6 came down near Ndola airport in the British colony Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia) as he flew in to peace talks to end fighting in the mineral-rich Katanga province in neighbouring Congo.
The United Nations' own inquiry shortly after the crash blamed pilot error, effectively endorsing an initial investigation by the colonial authorities.
But reports from witnesses and other diplomats have led to widespread accusations of a cover-up and the suspicion that Hammarskjoeld paid the price for supporting efforts by the newly independent Congolese government to crush an uprising in Katanga being funded by Western mining companies.
Goran Bjoerkdahl, a Swedish aid worker who has interviewed eyewitnesses to the crash in Ndola, recently proclaimed that there could be “no doubt Dag Hammarskjoeld's plane was brought down”.
“My own conclusion, after adding the new witnesses' statements and the archive information to previously published documents, is that Hammarskjoeld's DC-6 was brought down and that the motive was to maintain the west's control over Katanga minerals,” he wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper last month.
More..............................
secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down in 1961
From today
Stockholm - Fifty years on from the plane crash which killed UN chief Dag Hammarskjoeld, there is a chorus of demands for a new probe into his death that many claim was the work of mercenaries.
Hammarskjoeld was killed on the night of September 17-18, 1961, when his DC-6 came down near Ndola airport in the British colony Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia) as he flew in to peace talks to end fighting in the mineral-rich Katanga province in neighbouring Congo.
The United Nations' own inquiry shortly after the crash blamed pilot error, effectively endorsing an initial investigation by the colonial authorities.
But reports from witnesses and other diplomats have led to widespread accusations of a cover-up and the suspicion that Hammarskjoeld paid the price for supporting efforts by the newly independent Congolese government to crush an uprising in Katanga being funded by Western mining companies.
Goran Bjoerkdahl, a Swedish aid worker who has interviewed eyewitnesses to the crash in Ndola, recently proclaimed that there could be “no doubt Dag Hammarskjoeld's plane was brought down”.
“My own conclusion, after adding the new witnesses' statements and the archive information to previously published documents, is that Hammarskjoeld's DC-6 was brought down and that the motive was to maintain the west's control over Katanga minerals,” he wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper last month.
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